


Sanctify My Body (With Pain)

by hephaestiions



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Forgive Me, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Injury Recovery, M/M, Major Character Injury, Non-Graphic Violence, a little vague, but i like to think they're happy, i don't know how to tag, it's more or less happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:27:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 23,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23127769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hephaestiions/pseuds/hephaestiions
Summary: When Remus leaves for what is essentially a suicide mission, Sirius finds himself grappling with the realities of a life where he doesn't know if the love of his life is dead or alive.Perhaps the most confusing question in these situations is: which is worse?
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 17
Kudos: 56
Collections: Remus Lupin Fest 2020





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This story is written for a prompt which I absolutely loved. I wanted to write it for the hurt/comfort opportunity, but I'm sorry to say there's a lot of hurt and not much comfort. I couldn't completely cut out the comfort of course, so it's there, but it's only a little dosage in comparison to the sort of angst I incorporated. 
> 
> I tried to explore the avenue of importance of friendship in difficult situations, which is why my favourite character in this story is probably James. And despite this being a Remus Lupin Fest, I have written it from the perspective of Sirius, which might defeat the point a little, but only a little because this story is still almost entirely Remus centric. It was difficult to explore a character who is absent for the majority of the story, but this stepped me out of my comfort zone and pushed my writing abilities. I think my ending is a bit rushed and a bit over-indulgent but oh well, we do what we can. 
> 
> This story is rated Mature because though it isn't really 'mature' as such, it does incorporate language, themes and situations which perhaps only adults are equipped to deal with. Teen seemed too low a rating for the stuff that happens in here. 
> 
> I hope you have a good time reading this, and please be gentle with the criticism because this is only my second Wolfstar fanfiction.

The silent stillness of the night, broken only by faint church bells is fading into grotesque dawn that lightens the horizon despite the absence of sunrise.

There’s a creeping horror that seems to insidiously worm its way deeper into Wizarding London with the advent of every new morning. Its essence thickens in the air hanging heavy and damp with magic. Diagon Alley feels less like a street and more like a pathway to a graveyard, its usual vibrancy tamped down by the sombre veil of fear.

Terror entrenches itself into the cobblestones flattened by years of skipping feet traversing them, enthusiasm heightened in the newfound wonder of Hogwarts. Today, that enthusiasm is a memory, hiding its face in Binns’ History books, crouching in the narrowest crevices of stones, lest it is found by green lights intent on weeding it out.

What used to be the bustle of morning businesses has been rendered nought more than an ominous, unnatural silence that overwhelms the hushed whispers of names too fearful to be uttered aloud even in broad daylight.

_The Dark Lord._   
_He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named._   
_Death Eaters._   
_Merchants of terror._   
_Voldemort, says the bravest of them. But the price of bravery is life in these times._

Sirius watches the bakery across the street that opens sharp at seven in the morning even now from the window of the bedroom overlooking Diagon Alley. The comfort of the routine is like a blanket of warmth in the growing uncertainty foreshadowing a storm. The baker’s wife in her white cap and stained apron dusts the threshold, her sharp eyes darting this way and that.

Sirius wonders for a moment if he should step out, ask her for a loaf of bread, perhaps strike up a conversation.

 _She might know something_ , a desperate part of his mind suggests, overpowering the reason he fights to hold on to every second.

“She might also think ‘m insane,” he murmurs to himself, shaking his head in a futile attempt to clear it of the persistent delusions. “Pull yourself together, Padfoot,” he sighs and the puff of breath fogs up the window, further blurring the hazy air outside.

Something hopeful and _wanting_ lurches in him, pushing him out of the seat by the window he has frequented more than his bed in the past fortnight and rushes him with the ferocity of wild winds to the door. Throwing it open, he steps out into the cold air that nips at his nose and his cheekbones. On the street, a couple people hurry past, barely sparing him a glance.

Once they have passed, it is empty.

The baker’s wife pauses in her vigorous dusting and looks at him. A spectacle he must be, Sirius thinks sardonically, wand out, hair askew, standing on the street in his pyjamas. Her wand is lodged at her hip, secured by the string of an apron tight around her middle. These days it is important to let the world know you are armed. What would once be hidden under a sleeve or in the folds of a cloak is now displayed- like a talisman to ward off danger. Her pity is evident in the slight softening of her stern gaze. He feels his lower lip tremble, the muscles of his hand spasming in the throes of suppressed emotion.

Before doing something humiliating like crying on the street, Sirius steps back into the house, plunging himself into the darkness, with the finality of the door clicking shut behind him. He sinks to his knees, buries his face in cold palms and lets the tears flow freely, the hope surging in his heart leaking out through them.

It's been a fortnight. Remus has not returned.


	2. Chapter Two

t started the way most disappearances start these days: with Dumbledore showing up at Remus’ and Sirius’ door, his lined face unusually grave, at ten at night.

Well, perhaps Archibald Frume wasn’t called away to a Death-Eater raid at ten. Perhaps Amelia Gardner got to have dinner before she was instructed to spy on the Ministry. But Dumbledore, with his white beard and expectant eyes, is a permanent fixture in these situations.

They weren’t sleeping, not with the disappearances of Archie and Amy fresh in their minds, memories running on loop like a broken record. Innumerable others, some of the Order and some innocent Muggleborns and Half-bloods had been reported missing. Some whose names they didn’t recognise, some whose names they did.

But the disappearance of Archie, a Gryffindor from their year and Amy, a Hufflepuff who had dated James in Third Year and had declared him to be a “posh snob who seems to have more of a pash on his broom” after two weeks had felt like personal slights that stung worse than any jinx.

They’d been in bed, with the light of the street _Lumos_ streaming in, bathing the wall in gentle shadows. Sirius had been lying on Remus’ chest, listening to the thudding beat of his heart, Remus’ hands gently curling in his hair.

It had been a bleak day, rainy and cold. The final blow had arrived at the Order meeting when Emmeline had announced in a voice close to breaking that it had officially been seven days that Archie and Amy had gone missing.

Everyone had fallen silent. James had left the room, his hands shaking too violently to effectively mask the effect of the lightning bolt of emotions that had struck them all to their core.

But that night, with the light streaming in through the window and Remus’ solid form against his head, Sirius had dared to hope that everything would be alright. Even if they lost people along the way, some of them would be lucky enough to make it through. Some of them would get married like James and Lily and some of them would have children like Arthur and Molly. Wasn’t that the point of all this? After all this fear, misery, living in silence and darkness, they would be able to finally step out into the sunshine and proclaim themselves survivors.

That possibility had shone before Sirius’ eyes at that moment and a fervent desire to avenge the fallen had gripped him and centred him. Remus’ hand, that had stilled in his hair, resumed its soothing ministrations once he gripped the scarred chest tighter.

That was before the knock had sounded loud and clear like a war cry and they had leapt out of bed, eager for news, for information, for anything to find the Headmaster on their doorstep.

When Dumbledore had turned his inscrutable gaze onto Remus, Sirius had known with dawning horror that whatever the old man had come to say could not bode well for his lover.

"I have a favour to ask of you, Mr Lupin," the Headmaster had begun. Remus had leaned in, his interest piqued.

“It is unfathomably dangerous,” he had warned, “but there is no one better suited for this than you.”

"I do not know if you know this, but Fenrir Greyback is rising in Tom Riddle's ranks as something of an... executioner." Dumbledore hesitated.

"He receives instructions to murder, from what we know. Given that he is more beast than man, the unfortunate individual on the receiving end of Riddle's wrath finds themselves ripped to shreds mercilessly."

Remus had turned white. Sirius had wanted to claw at Dumbledore's throat, rip into him with all the deadly force he is capable of, for reminding Remus that he is kin to that beast. That he shares the same transformation because Greyback had brutalised him when he had been a child, too vulnerable, his defences insufficient.

"We need you to infiltrate the pack, Remus. We need you to understand the pattern and transfer it to the Order. We can't lose more people to the beast."

Sirius’ heart had skipped a beat in his chest when he had fully processed the weight of that demand.   
  
“That is hardly a favour, Headmaster! That’s a bloody death sentence!” He had shouted, when the silence after Dumbledore's declaration had become thick and charged with unsaid words, reduced to a staring contest between the wizened old man and Remus’ flickering amber eyes.

Dumbledore had turned pity-laden eyes upon him then and nodded. “It would seem so, Mr Black, yes.”

Sirius had nearly fainted from the casual acceptance in his tone.

“You can’t– you can’t do that! You can’t just force Remus to go die for us, that’s not–” he had been cut off by his words deserting him, his articulacy turning into a jumbled mess of indecipherable sound.

“I’m not forcing Remus to die for us,” Dumbledore had murmured. His voice was soft and Sirius was reminded of the grandfatherly man who had welcomed them at the Grand Feast. The Headmaster whose eyes had twinkled brighter than the charmed stars above, who had toasted the Founders by calling Godric Gryffindor an “astounding nitwit”.

“No one can force anyone to make that decision,” he had continued, turning back to Remus. Though it was Remus he was looking at, Sirius could feel the pinpricks of that gaze infiltrating him, making his blood run cold. “It is a choice. One I leave open to a student,” and here Dumbledore had paused, his voice turning softer, kinder, “who has admirably upheld the nobility Gryffindor House represents. We are depending on you, Mr Lupin, and we have hope. But we will... understand if you choose to decline.”

_Manipulation_ , Sirius’ mind had screamed. Dumbledore had known exactly what to tell Remus to hit that tender part of him willing to walk into any fight with a legitimate cause. The unforgiving part of him willing to lay down a life he didn’t believe to be worth much anyway.The only part of him that harboured hate so strong that he is willing to kill.

But before Sirius’ could firmly put his foot down or demand time, pull Remus into the haven of their bedroom and convince him not to do this, a strange fire had alighted in Remus’ eyes. One that signalled he was about to do something ridiculously stupid under the guise of bravery.

“I’ll do it,” Remus had said, his voice unwavering, jaw clenched and eyes hard. "Anything to see that bastard dead.” It was so uncharacteristic of Remus to be so vicious that Sirius had wanted to weep, hold his lover close and promise that there was another way to do this. But Remus has continued, the words spilling from his lips desperate, his fingers twisting and untwisting in his lap, "Promise me you'll kill him, that you won't show mercy, that you'll slaughter him like he's slaughtered innocents. Promise me you’ll have him dead at the first chance you get and I'll do it."

There had been silence after that proclamation; the only sounds in the living room were the crackling of the fire and the laboured breaths Remus was taking. And Sirius had barely registered in his despair that Dumbledore had answered with a slow, gentle nod and a small smile of pride laced with triumph.

He hadn’t been able to hold back the scream of frustration.

Meeting neither Dumbledore’s knowing gaze nor Remus’ pleading eyes, he'd stormed out of the house into the cold night, slamming the door shut behind him.

It was only when he had realised he hadn’t put on a jacket that he sat down on the nearest bench, the glistening orb of a _Lumos_ hanging over his head.

What was the point of staying alive, he'd wondered, trying to keep the tears at bay, if Remus wasn’t there by his side?


	3. Chapter Three

The ache settles like a simmering flame beneath Sirius’ ribcage- a slow burn gnawing at his heart. He feels wrung out, exhausted even when he sleeps, drained even when he rests.

_Remus_ , he finds himself whispering into the hush of the empty house. _Remus, Remus, Remus._ He shuts his eyes and repeats the name fervently till his mouth is dry, his throat is parched and his hands are trembling.

When he opens his eyes, he’s still alone.

He doesn’t know why he still hopes to wake up to a world where Remus’ absence is merely a nightmare. Some naive part of him still longs for a world where Remus’ body is a line of warmth against his back, where his sleep tousled hair gleams golden in the sunlight. A world where he’s still _there_.

When it gets too unbearable, when he can’t believe this is real, he pinches himself hard enough to bruise. He pulls and twists at his skin- the soft, fleshy meat of his thighs, the inside of his forearm, the sides of his stomach.

Sometimes, he laughs bitterly at the picture he paints in the mirror– littered in bruises, lined in scratches. If he had been more gullible, just a tad bit more delusional, he might even have convinced himself that Remus is still there. That the marks on his body are the aftermath of a passionate night tangled together in their bed. That the pinch of his fingers had been a lover’s open-mouthed skin against his hipbone. That the angry, red scratches down his arms had been made by Remus coming undone under his caress.

But he is not gullible and reality is as unmerciful as his mother’s _Crucio._

Whenever James comes by, he throws open the curtains and lights a couple of _Lumoses_ in the dark hallways. With a shake of his head, he tidies the sheets and siphons the dust away from the windowsills with a swift flick of his wand.

He brings Sirius pastries and homemade cupcakes and tries to tell him lively stories about Harry. Sirius listens and tries desperately to tap into the well of fondness in his heart that is entirely reserved for his delightful godson. He nods along to James’ words, smiling at suitable places.

It’s all an act.

Sirius can’t be arsed to care about Harry turning over and babbling nonsense that might sound like “mama” as James enthusiastically speculates. The person who should be here, listening to these stories with him and laughing along, isn’t here.

James and Lily often ask him over but Sirius can’t contemplate leaving his window-seat. Here, he can almost convince himself that he’s waiting for Remus who has gone out to buy bread and milk. He can wait for Remus to come up the street with two brown paper packages under his arm, one of which he will hide under his robes with a guilty grin. It’s chocolate and Sirius will feign exasperation when Remus tells him sheepishly. In reality, he can never begrudge his love something so simple that brings him such unadulterated pleasure.

_He is not dead_ , Sirius tells himself firmly when reality sneaks up and the street outside, which had seemed so promising mere seconds ago, seems to be a dreary extension of his greying thoughts. _He is not dead. I would know if he were._

That's when he catches sight of the book on the side table that Remus had been reading, the bookmark still stuck between the same pages. His conviction falters, his eyes blur and the chill that runs down his spine has nothing to do with December.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In our Muggle world, a missing person is declared dead after seven years without a trace. This is obviously not the case in the Wizarding world I have taken liberties with. Let us suspend our disbelief and common sense for a moment and assume Remus' 'death' has been declared taking into consideration the circumstances of his disappearance and the wartime climate of Wizarding Britain.

Remus is officially declared missing after a month.

He is declared dead after three.

Greyback’s known lairs are raided by Order members. His known associates are interrogated with copious amounts of Veritaserum and a few covert Crucios. There are numerous successful convictions for Muggle murders, Muggleborn torture, espionage and terrorism through the very illegal and very brutal interrogations. The Aurors still loyal to Dumbledore- Gawain Robards, Emilia Stinkleweep, their teams- turn a blind eye.

It isn’t fair. It definitely isn’t right. Every time Sirius engages in one of these sessions, bile rises in his throat and his conscience assumes menacing, snarling forms in his nightmares. You're a Black by blood, boy, it shouts at him, grinning and taunting. You were born to do this.

It isn't fair, it isn't right, but it’s war.

He swallows down the bile, brushes aside the nightmares and bares his teeth at the cowering Ministry employee whose tear-streaked, grimy face masks a glint of manipulative cowardice in his eye. The bastard confesses to illegal Obliviations, hoping to cut a deal.

He'll be in Azkaban for life if Sirius has something to say about it. 

Notwithstanding how far they go, what force they use- no one seems to know anything about Remus. When the Auror-in-charge eventually spells Remus’ case-file shut with a decisive snap and a rueful expression, Sirius’ frustration bursts out of him in a gust of wild magic that rattles the windowpanes.

He reigns it back in, gritting his teeth, intently focusing on the far wall of the cramped office.

“You can’t give up! Fuck you, you can’t fucking give up!” James screams at Gracie Vanderhall, a young Auror fresh out of the Academy. She's only a couple years older than them, a Ravenclaw from Andromeda’s year. Though Senior Aurors had been in charge of the case initially, once the disappearance crossed the two-month mark, priority kept shifting down the ranks of DMLE bureaucracy till the ‘babies’ were landed with it. To her credit, Gracie has followed every lead without bias. Even the ones that didn’t appear to be remotely suggestive. Really, Sirius has to admit she’s done her bit and then some. It has led nowhere.

Remus is still missing.

Not dead, Sirius tells himself, screwing his eyes shut. When he opens them, he concentrates on a crack running down the far wall, faint but present. Who cares what they say, Moony isn’t fucking dead.

James is throwing a right strop, he thinks, exhaling in a rush. His best friend's sinews are coiled tight with rage; he’s leaning out of the chair with his hands clenched around the armrests. He’s bellowing at Gracie with overt belligerence, turning heads and gathering an unabashedly interested crowd around the doorway. Poor Gracie looks ready to burst into tears.

Quietly, Lily reaches out to put a calming hand on James’ shoulder. “Love, it isn’t up to her,” she says softly. 

He spins around immediately, eyes blazing. “I don't care! If this was me, Lils, would Remus have given up? Would you have wanted him to give up? Do you believe he’s dead?” He asks, voice rising hysterically, catching on every other syllable. “Would you have fucking excused her or the brats in this stupid fucking department for declaring me dead and being done with it?”

His lips are chapped and bitten, his habitually clean-shaven face covered in a sparse, dark beard. The dark circles beneath his eyes rival Sirius’ own. Whoever had spread the rumour at Hogwarts that Remus was an 'outsider' in the Marauders’ group, kept around only because Black and Potter needed their homework done, should see James now.

Lily doesn’t back down, even in the face of her characteristically calm husband's irrational behaviour. Of course she doesn’t, Sirius thinks with detached amusement. Lily is to James what Remus has been to him- grounding energy, a calming force.

“James,” she says quietly, the slight edge to her voice betraying her desperation. She doesn't want this any more than he does. She wants her friend back, Sirius knows. Wants to pore over crosswords with him, wants to watch him jiggle Harry on his lap, wants to hug him again. But she recognises the futility of continuing a tirade against the Aurors. The potential danger of it.

The charged silence between them is broken finally- James' face crumples and his shoulders shake with wracking sobs. The audience at the doorway mutters slightly and largely disperses, leaving behind a few insatiable stragglers. Gossip-mongering sons-of-bitches, Sirius thinks uncharitably. This outburst will end up splashed in the papers with, "Potter Heir Terrorises Ministry Worker", or some such dreadfully twattish headline. If Remus is being held somewhere, his captors will know for sure that the Ministry has abandoned the case.

Gracie clears her throat uncomfortably, face flushed, breaking Sirius out of his scowling reverie.

“I’m sorry, I am,” she says with such earnestness that there’s no doubt she wants to keep looking. “I tried, but the higher-ups… they see no leads and they think it’s cold. Trail's not been giving us much hope, you have to admit.” With another embarrassed cough she continues, “At a time like this, the Auror resources–”

James looks up sharply, blazing eyes daring her to speak the words. His sudden silence speaks volumes. Daring her to say she thinks they are wasting resources looking for Remus. He’s going to make this worse, Sirius realises with a detached sense of pragmatism if he keeps running his stupid mouth. Before James can utter another word to give his boiling anger shape, Sirius interjects.

“We understand.”

His voice is broken; rough from screaming himself hoarse every time he thinks of Remus. It dips in the middle, but the Black blood he can’t cleanse himself of no matter how hard he tries keeps his chin up, his head high. “We wouldn’t want to impose on the Department with such requests at a time like this.”

Gracie’s face steadily grows redder. She buries it in her hands.

James turns to look at him but Sirius keeps his eyes trained on the wall behind the Auror’s head.

“We appreciate the effort, Ms Vanderhall. We wish it could have been a more fulfilling experience,” he finishes. He meets her eyes when she raises them and notes with some surprise that they're shiny, misted over. He distantly recalls a Ravenclaw third year during their first year ruffling Remus' hair affectionately during breakfast in the Great Hall.

She didn’t want to stop the investigation, he tells himself, even as white-hot anger surges in him at her apologetic gaze. She wanted to help.

He stands abruptly, chair screeching loudly on the marble floor. Everyone winces and the shameless spectators at the door finally disperse entirely. “We’re leaving, James. Lils.”

Lily’s up in a second, her relief palpable. He knows she wants to get the fuck away from here, back to her son, whom she's left with James' ever-accommodating mother. Sirius is seized by a surge of bone-deep weariness when he surmises that James, the oaf, isn’t going to back down easily.

“They just said looking for Remus is a–” James begins, tone laced with venomous rage.

“I know what they said, I was there.”

He’s growing increasingly exhausted by the endless argument his life has turned into. With Dumbledore, with James, with himself.

“Then why won’t you stay and fight?!” James’ breathing is harsh and loud in the silent Auror cubicle. “If Remus was here and it was you missing, he wouldn’t have fucking let it go! He’d have come here and screamed at these toe-rags and anyone who dared to say it was a waste of fucking resources–”

“James!” Sirius screams, the lid of his temper blowing right off. “For fuck’s sake, mate, drop it! I can’t keep fucking doing this with the lot of you, rushing around after false hopes and false leads, going back to an empty fucking bed every night when I know- when I know-! You keep saying Remus would have stayed and fought, he wouldn’t have let me go, he wouldn’t have let any of us go, but for fuck’s sake, don’t you see?”

James’ eyes are wide behind his fogged up glasses, rounded in disbelief and grief. Sirius has to look away to stop the unbecoming tears from spilling.

“He’s not here,” he manages, through his tightened throat. “He’s not here so it doesn’t fucking matter what he would have done. It’s all ‘would have’ now, Prongs. He’s gone.”

James is shaking his head slowly from side to side. Sirius can tell the nickname has struck at his heart, the way it was meant to. His eyes are clenched shut and through gritted teeth, he whispers, “Stop.”

“Prongs,” Sirius says, voice lowered to a whisper. He's forcing himself to speak, everything in him begging to curl up somewhere and sleep for a decade. “Please. You’re all I have.”

There’s a moment he thinks James is going to keep going at it and he’s ready to drop to the ground, because the prospect of enduring another fucking second of this agony is like nails on a chalkboard, grating against his sensibilities. He's been bled, his being feels exposed and raw, he doesn't want to continue this anymore.

But James is rushing at him, enveloping him in a crushing hug, breaking what’s left of Sirius’ heart into smithereens. He sobs into the crook of Sirius’ neck, spectacles digging into Sirius' jaw.

“Moony isn’t– he can’t be– not after…”

Sirius doesn’t reply. The words have died in his throat.


	5. Chapter Five

War has a way of distracting one from the more mundane realities of life, like running out of coffee. 

The morning Sirius does finally run out of coffee, he stumbles into the kitchen in nothing but his boxers, blinking blearily. He takes a look into the empty tin, heaves an exasperated sigh and calls out, “We ran out of coffee. Again.” 

The house is silent. Sirius frowns, prepared to shout again before freezing in his tracks, fingers clenched against the rim of his cup. 

Of course. 

Remus isn’t here to buy him coffee, to sidle up behind him in the mornings and complain about how the bacon isn’t crispy enough while nuzzling his neck. 

Remus isn’t here to sneak out chocolate behind his back, to rock his morning wood against Sirius’ arse as he tries to focus on buttoning up his shirt. 

Remus, for all intents and purposes, is dead, and there’s nothing Sirius can do to bring him back. 

Though he lives in the Wizarding world, where the definition of death is far more fluid than the ironclad finality of it in the Muggle world, Sirius thinks it’s going to stick this time. 

Remus isn’t coming back. 

The cup drops from his hand, thudding against the granite countertop before falling to the floor, smashed to small fragments. His knees are too shaky, so he falls to the floor with his favourite cup, shards of broken china digging into his flesh. They cut into his thighs, his knees and his palms with the painful sting of broken hope and Sirius gasps at the unbearable heaviness that has settled in his heaving chest. 

He holds out his hand and mutters a wandless Reparo which causes most of the shards to fly out painfully from under him, out of him, merging into the shape of the cup it used to be. But there’s blood running down its sides and the handle isn’t fixed right. The faultlines of the breaks are clearly visible.

He cradles it in his arms and stays where he is, bleeding out all over the floor from shallow wounds. He remains motionless till a sharp crack of Apparation alerts him to someone’s arrival. 

He can’t bring himself to care or question, so he stares with blurred eyes at the entryway of the kitchen, awaiting his visitor. That is how Peter finds him, bloody and weary at ten in the morning. 

“Merlin fuck, Pads,” he mutters under his breath, dragging the tip of his wand over the visible cuts, sealing them closed. He’s always been handy with Healing spells, a skill he’s improved upon, now that he’s in Healer training.

Sirius doesn’t say anything, closing his eyes as Peter putters about the kitchen, fixing up tea. 

“Been a while since I’ve seen you,” he rasps out from his poor vantage point on the floor, opening one eye. Wormtail stills for a moment before going back to stirring sugar with exaggerated enthusiasm. 

“Healer training,” he says, shrugging. “You know how it is, they want to kill us before they allow us to save anyone’s life.” 

Sirius smiles. He’s missed this with Peter- the simplicity of conversation. “It’s good to see you, Petesies.” 

He frowns again when Wormtail tenses slightly. Despite his currently impaired state, Sirius is attentive enough to notice something is going on here. 

“Something wrong?” he asks, keeping his tone casual though his concern ratchets up a notch. Pete’s always been the little brother, the one they tease the most but are also ridiculously overprotective of. He’s never really been forthcoming and it’s always been up to James or Remus to coax truths out of him. 

But lately, James has been busy with Order work and his son, and Remus is… not here. 

The question seems to settle Peter's nervousness somewhat. “No,” he says, tone faux bright. “Just tired. It’s been a long week.” 

Sirius sighs. “Get some sleep, then, Worms. Next week isn’t going to let up from what I know of your stupid job.” 

Peter shoots him a bright smile. It appears a tad forced. “It isn’t, but I can’t afford to neglect the lot of you, just because. I went to see Harry yesterday and boy has he grown up! I can’t recognise the mite he was a couple months ago!” 

Guilt rears its ugly head in Sirius’ stomach. 

They don’t keep up with Wormtail as much as they should. In these desperate times, they'd do well to keep the ones they have left close. Pete's been family since their childhood. He deserves to be treated like it. 

As though reading his mind, Wormtail says quickly, “It’s been tough for us all, lately. What with… everything.” 

He doesn’t mention Remus or the steadily increasing disappearances, but ‘everything’ is an adequately apt descriptor for the fuckery life has become of late. 

He plucks the two mugs of tea off the counter and Sirius notices he’s used Remus’ cup to brew Sirius' tea. He doesn’t object. It feels warm and familiar to drink from it, to put it to use again. It's been a while since Sirius has been able to do something normal and not feel like the haunting mockery of Remus' spirit. 

“Drink up, you look like death warmed over,” Peter remarks, eyeing Srius warily, blowing over his own tea. 

“Know just what to say to charm a bloke's pants off, don't you, Pete,” Sirius says with a wry smile. 

Peter shrugs with a grin. There’s a comfortable silence between them. 

It’s broken when Peter asks, “Do you think there’s a spy in the Order?” 

Sirius’ wand hand jerks and a little bit of tea spills onto his thigh with a sizzle. In a flash, Wormtail’s reached out and healed the slight scald in a matter of seconds. It’s wandless, wordless magic and Sirius’ mouth drops open. 

“Where’d you learn that?” he asks, impressed and slightly awed. If he's honest, Wormtail’s always been rather magically weak. Power like this from him is commendable. Healer training is truly working wonders for him. 

But Wormtail himself looks like he’s seen a ghost. "It's worked," he mutters, eyes wide. “Sorry,” he whispers, after a second, regaining his composure. 

“For what? What worked?” 

“I didn’t realise… I could do that. I've been... practising.” 

Sirius laughs. “When you do something enough times, you get good at it, that's common sense, you git.” He waggles his eyebrows. "That's how I got so good at..." he trails off, making an obscene gesture. 

Wormtail’s answering smile is tight and strained. There's no mirth in his eyes. He barely appears to have registered a comment which would have once made him scrunch up his delicate nose and stifle a boisterous laugh. Instead, he looks down at his hands. 

“I should probably go." He doesn't meet Sirius' eye.

“Hey,” Sirius frowns. Something isn’t alright here. “Hey, Pete, you can talk to me anytime, you know that, right?” 

Peter shakes his head. “You have so much of your own shit going on. I’m fine.” 

Sirius raises his eyebrows. “So you admit something shitty is going on with you?” 

Wormtail cringes vehemently. “I have to go,” he says, getting up, shifting nervously from foot to foot. “I’ll see you around.” 

“What were you saying about Order spies?” Sirius calls, recalling what had made him spill the tea in the first place. The concept of spies in the Order isn’t new but it doesn't fail to strike terror in Sirius' heart. If the Order falls, there is no remaining hope against the Death-Eaters. Every witch or wizard with any moral upstanding has coalesced under the roof of that one organisation. 

Wormtail tenses at the question, but walks away, pretending not to have heard. 

Sirius follows his retreating back with an uneasy gaze. A chasm of discomfort deepens in his stomach. He’s never been an expert at recognising shifty behaviour and pinpointing its cause like Remus was- Remus is.

Sirius, on the other hand, has always noticed things. Acting upon them has never really been his strong suit. 

He looks down at the cup in his hands and sighs. 

“I miss you,” he informs it, before blinking and wondering if he’s finally losing the plot too.


	6. Chapter Six

He’d been right, Sirius thinks. It is a racing, wild thought in his head, quickly forgotten when he blasts open the door of the Potters’ cottage in Godric Hollow. He’d been absolutely fucking right about something going on with Wormtail.

Only he’d thought it was a girl, or maybe a guy. Perhaps even his family.

Never in his wildest dreams, would he have been able to guess the truth of the matter, that in Peter's stupid, treacherous mind, it had been betrayal making the rounds. The reality of his disloyalty still seems incomprehensible though a lot of things make more sense now. The unaccountable absences from innumerable Order meetings, the growing detachment, the weird behaviour at Sirius’ house. His stilted question about Order spies, even his increased magical prowess. Everything, Sirius thinks with gritted teeth and exploding rage, can be chalked up to the bastard's deception.

Sirius doesn’t want to think about the price Wormtail had to pay for such heightened, advanced magic. He doesn’t have the fucking time right now.

Immediately after Sirius blasts the door open, he realises the cottage was under a strong Silencio from the outside. The minute the Confringo hits, the spell collapses. His heart stops when he hears heart-wrenching screams from the interior.

Lily.

Poor girl is fucking terrified. She’s shrieking in a voice almost inhumane in its jagged hoarseness, “Not Harry! No, please, I’ll do anything! Please!”

James, Sirius wonders, his frantic tension ratcheting up a few notches. Where is James?

James would never let Lily face down Voldemort alone. James would…

James would die before he let that happen. Fuck.

Heart beating in his throat, Sirius races up the stairs to Harry’s bedroom. The sight greeting his eyes, chills him to the bone. His hands turn damp with sweat; his knees threaten to give out under him. It is the adrenaline pumping through his veins that keeps him upright.

Voldemort is holding a wand to Lily’s throat, his eyes gleaming red with a satisfied smugness. His vile serpent, Nagini, is coiled around Harry’s cot, her forked tongue slinking out periodically to taste the air. If snakes could grin, the most malicious, deadly curve would be tilting up that cursed animal’s mouth.

And Harry is… standing up in his cot, mesmerised by the bright lights and far too unaware of the lethal beast beside him. There are sparks in the air, fizzling out slowly. Harry jumps and claps in time to Lily’s screams.

It’s a grotesque, hideous disfiguration of what Sirius can only imagine being a joyous scene of Halloween delights.

“One more step, Mr Black, and this little Mudblood’s throat will pay, shall I say, a rather heavy price.”

Voldemort's voice is sibilant and smooth; stretching sinuously, like a hiss. His eyes are focused on Lily and a small smile dances on his white lips.

“Where is James?” Sirius asks, remaining in the doorway. He searches his mind for more words, anything to keep a conversation going. He’s stalling, but he needs some fucking time to process what he’s seeing and figure out what the fuck he should do. From where he's standing, Lily and his godson are about to die while he watches. He swallows and refuses to think about what Harry will do if his mother crumples to the ground after taking an AK to the chest.

“Answer him,” Voldemort whispers into Lily’s ear, bringing his mouth close enough to her skin for Sirius’ arms to break out in gooseflesh. She cringes, bucking away from his touch but his grip is unyielding.

Her green eyes are wide and despairing as she shakes her head. Her sobs are uncontrollable and her voice seems to have disappeared.

“I don’t know,” she manages through hiccups. The pain etched into those three words breaks Sirius’ heart. “I don’t k-know, and he won’t tell me.”

“That’s right. Good girl.”

Voldemort’s smile widens until his pallid face resembles a grinning skull. He fully faces Sirius for the first time since the beginning of this ominous encounter. There’s a spark of unconcealed amusement in his red pupils. “Would you believe me, Mr Black, if I told you that I too am unaware of where precisely James Potter is?”

Sirius tries to breathe evenly. He must remain steady. Cowering before the monster, letting his composure crumble– it's a path to certain death. Voldemort has more in common with a Dementor than a wizard- he feeds on weakness. He has to stall long enough for someone with more magical knowledge to turn up. Someone like Dumbledore, or Remus–

Fuck.

This is not the time for that. He tamps down firmly on the tide of horror the thought of Remus stirs up in him. Instead, he taps into the rage that simmers beneath the surface. He's lost his best friend, his lover, to the clutches of this vile creature. It's enough for his magic to thrash wildly within its confines, demanding to be let free in a destructive channel of power. But in a showdown of brute force, Sirius knows he won't win. Tilting his head slightly and twirling his wand, with as much amicability as he can muster he says, “I don’t really see what reason you'd have to lie to either of us about it.”

Lily shuts her eyes. She’s trembling like a leaf in a strong wind. Her hands are clasped together and her lips are forming inaudible words which seem to comfort her. Prayer, Sirius realises with a barely concealed start. Her hands are clasped together in prayer and the small gesture of uncharacteristic desperation grounds him. He needs to do this properly for Lily’s sake.

For Harry’s sake.

For James, for Remus, wherever they might be. For all he knows, James is at the bottom of the Thames now. Remus in some obscure part of the Scottish forests, torn to shreds; a feast for the vultures. But their responsibilities weigh heavy on Sirius' shoulders. Even if they all end up dead, he needs to perform the best he can. The rebellion of youth, the Crucios from his mother, the seven years spent in the Gryffindor Boys’ Dorm, planning elaborately executed pranks have all led up to this moment. It is everything he has been gearing up for since the moment he heard the name, “Voldemort”.

He'll be damned if he backs down now.

Voldemort is looking at him in a fashion Sirius can only describe to be speculative. Sirius buries the childish urge to shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

“Ah, Sirius Black. Regulus was your… brother, was he not?”

The pang of grief that courses through him every time he hears of Regulus makes its presence known.

“He was.” All that Pureblood training was good for something, he reflects in the throes of barely concealed, bitter mirth. His voice does not hitch even slightly though his entire being wants to sink down to the singed carpet.

“A loyal supporter, one of my best. Came from good values. Good breeding. A good family.” Voldemort eyes him with contempt emanating from him in waves. “Very much like you, Mr Black, should you have chosen to do justice to all of that.”

Sirius clenches his jaw.

“What a pity,” Voldemort murmurs. Though his grip on Lily remains firm, his attention turns almost entirely towards Sirius. “Even the Gryffindor in you would have been pardoned if you chose to join my ranks.” He smiles and it's a horrible twist to the white lips. “After all, lately I’ve been welcoming… quite a few of them. Surely you know of whom I speak?”

Sirius ignores Lily’s gasp.

“I heard of Pettigrew’s indiscretions, yes.”

Lily whispers no and Sirius forces himself to push away her pain. He cannot afford to acknowledge it, lest he falters in this showdown.

Voldemort laughs. “Ah, indiscretions. How like an illicit affair you make it sound." His next words are tinged in imperious superiority that makes Sirius' blood boil. "He was merely looking for power. Prestige. Acknowledgement of his capabilities. An opportunity to be on the winning side when the lot of you have been set to rights. Pushed to your knees, made to serve."He turns unbearably smug, "I believe he could not find any assurance of strength in your folds. You see, there is no Dark or Light as Dumbledore demarcates so firmly. There is failure and success and I,” he pitches his voice low, “am the Master of success.”

“Your power is not one to be sought out,” Sirius says, the words falling from his lips before he can stop them, reason them out, neutralise them.

“Indeed,” Voldemort says, and he sounds pleased. “It is not. Not for weaklings like you. Or this one,” he says, rattling Lily’s whole frame by the roots of her hair. “Or the old man in his high tower, thinking he may yet best me.”

“Where is James?” Sirius asks, refusing to be drawn into verbal sparring with the Dark Lord. Down that road lies antagonism. Being at the receiving end of a killing curse because he's pissed the Dark Lord off too much will defeat the purpose of this fool's errand.

“Mr Potter,” Voldemort turns back to look at Lily, amused smile back in full force, “is being dealt with. How I do not know, nor do I wish to. I leave such petty matters to the less savoury in my ranks. You will be surprised by the true extent they are willing to debase themselves for a mere taste of glory.” His tone is smug. He thinks he’s won already. 

Sirius’ heart sinks. The bit of hope that had kindled in his heart that James has simply gone out for groceries and is being tailed by Voldemort's men holding him back is gone. Dead, then. James is dead.

“But I have wasted enough time in idle chatter, Mr Black,” Voldemort says and Sirius could have mistaken his demeanour as kind if it hadn’t been paired with everything else. “I have business to get back to.”

Lily has gone limp. Her eyes are open and glassy, her nose is bloody and her hair is a rumpled mess. Voldemort lets go of her hair and she crumples to the floor on her knees.

“I would have spared you,” he says to her with a sneer, “if only you’d known better than to waste my time.”

He points his wand at her, and a lot of things happen at once.

Harry watches his mother crumple to the floor with rising indignation on his delicate features. Something must have clicked in the toddler's brain. The next thing Sirius knows, he's leaning over the lip of the cot, babbling something like, “Mama!” with his arms outstretched.

Lily’s drooping head snaps up immediately. A whispered, “My baby!” leaves her lips in a strangled sob. There's a longing in those words, the pain of a mother who can't reach for her hurting child.

Sirius’ mouth drops open at the ensuing display of wild magic from an angry Harry which throws Voldemort against the far wall of the room. Gathering his bearings, Sirius casts a rapid Accio, which lands the creature's wand at his feet. With one vicious kick from a booted foot, it rolls away, tapping noises indicating its descent down the stairs.

Nagini rears her head up as her master is flung like a rag doll against a wall. There's a second of paralysing fear. Sirius is fairly sure she's going to attack Harry but instead she's rising and writhing in the air as his godson looks up at her with a frown, sucking his thumb into his mouth. The further back he tilts his head, the higher the snake rises, her hisses growing dangerously pronounced.

Within a moment, Sirius casts a Protego over Lily and Harry with as much strength as he can muster. He conjures a Patronus, ignoring the pang in his chest at the sight of the bounding wolf and sends it to Dumbledore.

“Godric’s Hollow,” he bellows at it and the wolf rushes out in a swirl of white smoke. There is no point to the farce of Secret-Keeper anymore. The purpose has been defeated. If everyone must know the location of the Potters, they will.

He turns back to see Voldemort getting up, dusting the dirt off his robes. There is no smile on his face anymore. Instead, his teeth are bared in a vicious snarl.

“You can’t hold me off, boy!” he cries, voice high pitched and grating. His fine-boned hands rise, magic crackling at the fingertips.

Sirius knows that with the grim certainty of a martyr. But he still has to stall.

“Is that so?” he taunts, twirling his wand. “A toddler bashed your head into a wall. Pardon me, if I think my chances are looking up.”

An inhumane scream rips itself from Voldemort’s throat. It's the sound of mania gone too far. The monster raises its hands, sending a pulsing ball of green light at Sirius.

Sirius dodges. Years of Chaser training have honed his reflexes to instinctively kick in.

Harry claps and giggles.

Voldemort is hissing. Sibilant, low sounds are escaping his mouth and though he’s still focused on Sirius, he's turning increasingly desperate. His concentration is slipping.

He’s speaking Parseltongue, Sirius realises belatedly. Nagini isn’t responding to it. He doesn’t know where Nagini is, but Voldemort's terrifying presence is somewhat impaired without her slithering at his feet. It's unsettling the monster, but he doesn't want to draw attention to the chink in his armour.

Pity. Sirius has already cottoned on.

“Precious pet not coming out to play?” he asks, dodging a white bolt lazily. It hits a table which splinters with the impact. That was meant to be his fucking skull, Sirius thinks with detached admiration for the surreality of the situation. The flying shards catch Sirius in the soft flesh of his thigh, but he masks the wince.

Voldemort hisses at him. The curses increase in both intensity and speed.

Sirius is entirely on the defensive, with no opportunity to edge in an offensive spell. Even if he could, Voldemort is too powerful to be struck down by anything Sirius can conjure in the heat of the moment.

But he can at least hold his own.

He dodges a few more curses and hears Lily banging against the walls of the Protego he is holding up, demanding to be let out so she can fight. Sweat beads on his brow. He can feel it dripping into his eyes. There’s a rushing in his ears which seems to be overpowering everything else. His entire focus narrows onto the two Protegos behind him and the dance he’s engaged in with the white-faced monster.

Now he understands Bellatrix’s madness. He understands the Carrows’ laughter. There's adrenaline coursing through his entire body– his brain, his heart, his limbs. He wants to laugh. He can feel every line of tension in his body, he is hyperaware of his shaking muscles. But his head feels light like he isn’t quite there.Like he's a spectator of a match he’s cheering for.

“Foolish, impertinent child! You cannot win!” Voldemort screams, cutting through the paradox of fogginess and clarity in his brain. Sirius smiles. Maybe he can’t.

Maybe he’ll die.

But he sure as hell is going to put up a damn good fight before he’s taken down.

When his wand sails out of his hand, he knows the end is near.

He expects Voldemort to turn it on him and steels himself to face down his childhood comrade. The prospect of it sends pain lancing through his rapidly beating heart and he swallows down the edge of persistent panic.

But Voldemort tosses the wand aside like a useless toy and continues his wandless, wordless magical assault with a triumphant smirk.

He’s far too aware of the Protegos now– the one around Harry pulses like a headache and the one around Lily meeting resistance from within.

“Stop trying to break the fucking shield, Lils!”

He can’t turn back to look but he knows she’s giving him her patented glare that she used to give sexist teachers and purist classmates. It's been forged in rage and frustration. He hasn't had it directed at him since Fourth Year when they'd forged a tentative friendship.

If he takes her shield down, he knows he’ll have more backup. There’s a better chance he’ll live. Lily’s wandless magic is sounder than his and she can direct something of an offence if he can keep the beast distracted. But he thinks of the poor kid who has lost his father. He's also going to watch his godfather die tonight.

Sirius can't sacrifice his mom.

The surge of regret, bitterness and anger strengthens the shields. He murmurs, “Sorry, Lils,” at her shriek of frustration. He can’t let her die. Not while he lives. The only way those Shields are coming down is if he’s dead and though it’s a likely outcome, it gives Sirius purpose.

His wand is gone, his wandless magic is pathetic and he can’t stall with words because if he misses a beat in this violent dance, he’ll be dead on the floor.

He only has one last ace up his sleeve.

He steps back and halts, counting on Voldemort's curiosity to understand his opponent's every move. He's right. Voldemort pauses, giving him a quizzical look.

“Tired already?” he mocks.

Sirius shakes the hair out of his eyes. Absently he thinks Remus would have liked how long he's grown it out.

“How much did Pettigrew tell you about us?” he asks, wearily sidestepping the Reducto sent his way. It smashes against Lily’s shield and feels like a punch to the stomach.

“Enough for me to know you’re more of a disgrace to your family than a mere blood traitor,” Voldemort smirks. “It seems you’re… liaising with beasts. The werewolf. If Regulus were here, he could have had the pleasure of eradicating the blight that taints his family name so.” 

Sirius grins, feral and bloody. “Did the worm not tell you, then?”

Voldemort’s confusion works to his benefit– he can sharpen the element of surprise to a weapon. “I am a bit of a beast myself,” he growls out and revelling in Voldemort’s shock, transforms into Padfoot.

It feels different.

Since Remus left, almost a year ago, he hasn’t transformed. He hasn’t had the heart to. The part of him attuned to Padfoot in his human form has whined and pawed at his chest this past year with increasing desperation. But the memories are too thick in this skin; the scent of his companion too overpowering.

He realises now that in that one year of neglect, Padfoot’s very nature seems to have changed.

Instead of the playful, cheery dog with a penchant for pulling tails on the field, he’s turned into something more sinister. Darker. He can feel it in the tension of his limbs, the lengthened canines and the thickened fur.

He can’t see himself but he can feel the edges of his being. They're rougher, sharper. He’s reminded of the creature drawn in his Divination textbook- the Grim.

He bares his teeth. 

Voldemort is standing there, still stunned and Sirius charges, jaws snapping.

The corner of a ball of white light catches his flank and he whimpers as he falls but arches up again. This is his only shot at an offence. This is his only shot at keeping the monster distracted from Lily and Harry.

“A filthy mutt!” Voldemort crows. “What would Walburga say?”

The anger leaves a sour tang on his tongue.

Before he can charge again, he watches in surprise as Voldemort is thrown back– for the second time this evening– by an unseen force. He turns to see Dumbledore in the doorway, white beard flying, wand held aloft.

“Mr Black,” he greets, genial as ever. He sounds like he's come over for a pot of tea in the evening. “It’s been a while.”

Sirius changes back. His hip is bleeding. “Headmaster.”

“It would be prudent to take Ms. Evans and Harry somewhere safe, wouldn’t you say? She seems rather furious.” There’s amusement in the words but Sirius is too tired to be annoyed at Dumbledore’s never-ending nonchalance. Another day, he tells himself.

He takes the inevitable risk and turns back. Lily has her hands on her hips and though she's still trembling all over, her patented glare makes Sirius cringe.

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr Black.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.”

Sirius nods and brings down the shield charms. Lily rushes out to scoop Harry up. With one last look towards Voldemort being held back by Dumbledore, they reach for each other, pulling into a tight hug. From Godric's Hollow, they Apparate straight to Sirius’ house on Diagon, Flooing from there in a desperate heap into the Headmaster’s office at Hogwarts.

They lie on the hearth, hearts beating in an erratic rhythm, holding hands. When Harry begins to cry on Lily's chest, they're broken out of their reverie and turn to each other at the exact same moment.

Freedom is a strange sensation.


	7. Chapter Seven

“Ms Evans.”

Lily looks up from a squalling Harry in her lap. He hasn't stopped crying since they've returned and he's too young for a calming draught to be administered. Lily's hands are still shaking, and her eyes bear the shell-shocked wideness of the traumatised.

McGonagall is standing at the entrance of the hospital wing, hands clasped behind her back.

“Someone to see you,” she says with a smile, moving aside to reveal James.

He's bloody and tattered, coated in filth and grime. His shirt is torn, his hair is singed, and he's covered in more cuts than Sirius can't count.

But he’s alive.

Sirius wants to go and hug him, wants to cry into his shoulder, shake him, and ask him where the fuck he had gotten to. Instead, he lets James and Lily stare at each other while Harry crows, “Dada!” with deserved excitement. In a rush of movement, they’re hugging, and crying, and kissing each other and their son who is squealing and giggling, tears forgotten.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” Lily whispers against James’ visibly bruised chest as he presses a soft, desperate kiss into her hair. “I thought I lost you.”

“Never, sweetheart,” James murmurs soothingly, holding her closer. Harry squirms impatiently between them. “Never.”

With a final kiss and a loaded look, he detaches himself from them and looks over at Sirius who is sitting on a hospital bed because he can’t get his hands or his legs to stop shaking long enough to stand.

“You’re alright?” James asks. His voice is cracking, his breathing suspiciously choked.

Sirius nods once, a jerky, stilted thing. It breaks a staunched flood in James’ heart because he’s dragging Sirius by the arms into the tightest hug he’s ever received since the time he turned up on James’ doorstep in Fifth Year after running away from Grimmauld Place.

“Mate,” he whispers into Sirius’ ear. It doesn’t really sound like a complete sentence. James probably wants to say more. But Sirius clutches him back as tightly as his shaking arms allow and says, “I know.”

“Voldemort is gone,” Prongs says, his voice wondering as though he can’t quite believe it.

“I know.”

“You–”

“Yes.”

And then suddenly James is howling and screaming and cursing Peter and Sirius is smiling because he knows Prongs will be okay. This is how he copes with things that are too much for him– he lets it out. Harry startles in Lily’s lap, but she gently shushes him, casting a meaningful glance at James. He takes the baby from Lily, brings his tiny body up to his face and kisses Harry's chest, his breathing harsh and ragged.

His son calms him better than any Draught.

They remember McGonagall’s presence when she clears her throat from the doorway. They all look up, slightly awkward, now that they know she's been watching. “You’ll be pleased to know Mr Pettigrew has been apprehended." She hesitates slightly, letting this news sink in. If anyone understands the weight of Peter's betrayal, it is the Head of Gryffindor House. "The Aurors are rounding up remaining Death Eaters. Once you have recovered, you are free to join in on any activity the Order has been granted permission to engage in, except, understandably, interrogations. Though from what I’ve heard, the Aurors might be approaching you rather soon, Mr Black.”

Sirius looks up, astonished. “I haven’t done anything this time!”

“Quite the contrary, Mr Black.” She looks amused and a little proud. She’s always had a soft spot for him and he for her. The affection causes an unwitting smile to play on his lips, one she returns. “Everything you did has led them to believe you might be a good candidate for the training programme.”

He remembers the career orientation session from Fifth Year. You'd be a competent Auror, Mr Black. You're fast on your feet, you have excellent magical prowess and impeccable marks in Defence.

He feels suddenly bashful. “You know I never really thought about joining the Aurors. It was Moony who–”

Moony. Remus. His lover, his partner, his life.

He's in the hospital wing. He’s spent innumerable mornings under James’ invisibility cloak here, keeping Remus company after full moons. In this place, packed with memory, nostalgia and the scent of chocolate Peter hoarded for Remus for these mornings, it really crashes into him.

Moony still isn’t here.

Voldemort is dead. The Death Eaters are being rounded up. Everything in the Wizarding World is falling into place.

But Moony, his Remus is still gone.

He had harboured some foolish hope– that with Voldemort’s fall, they would finally have the time and the energy to put every fibre of their capabilities into finding Moony.

They would bring him back from whatever hell he’s lying in. They would reopen Auror investigations, send out posters, perform more interrogations, do something.

But it has been a year since Moony walked into Greyback’s snare without stepping back out. Voldemort has fallen. All those explanations he had given himself are suddenly showing themselves up to be exactly what they always were- ways for him to postpone his grief. Ways for him to deal with the loss of Remus by deluding himself into a fantasy realm where everything ends with a happily-ever-after.

He can’t breathe. He can’t fucking breathe, his Remus is dead–!

Fuck.

He scrabbles at his throat, trying to get in enough air to make his lungs work. This realisation, the weight of this pain, is going to kill him when Voldemort couldn’t. He can’t make it, not without Moony, not without those warm, amber eyes, those deceptively strong arms, those comforting words. Not without mornings after the full moon when he wakes up curled around Moony’s broken form, soothing him with soft words and Dittany. Not without lunch dates with James and Lily, Frank and Alice and Dorcas. Not without waking up to his mouth, his hands, his wickedly delicious cock, his beautiful laughter.

His Remus.

He survived Voldemort without a fucking wand and this is going to fucking kill him. Laughter bubbles up in his throat and he’s hysteric with it, rolling around on the bed laughing till tears pour from his eyes.

Distantly he hears Pomfrey urgently ask for Harry and the sound of a closing door.

He can’t speak, can’t breathe, can’t do a damn thing because he can’t stop laughing at the fucking joke his life has become. He’s still alive, but Moony isn’t and this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

He wants to be dead.

He wants to be dead so he doesn’t have to deal with this searing, physical ache ignited within him. He doesn’t want to open his eyes and wake up to a world in which Moony doesn’t exist anymore. 

When the laughter finally transcends into painful wracking sobs and hiccups, he can’t take it anymore and vomits all over the side of the bed. He’s covered in sweat and tears and his mouth tastes like bile.

He just wants Remus but Remus is dead.

Not dead, says the voice in his head- trained to refute all claims of Remus’ death for the past eleven months. And somehow that reaction from his own self is worse than the definite knowledge of his lover's death. He knows but he can’t accept it. It stabs him over and over again, like a sharpened knife, and he screams till he’s hoarse.

He screams till he can’t hear himself anymore, screams till his voice is simply a throbbing pain in his throat and he keeps screaming till he feels Pomfrey’s cool hands on his nape. He tastes a sweet potion on his tongue and his brain makes the connection between hysteric behaviour and an extra-strong Calming Draught.

Everything turns black and silent.

He’s on his back, floating in the darkness. With the last bit of consciousness, he prays to Lily’s god that he doesn’t wake up again.


	8. Chapter Eight

Sirius wakes up.

He’s surprised by how easily time passes. Even when you can't move on, the world does with the annoying grace of inevitability. There's some philosophy in that realisation, but Sirius is too tired to dissect it.

He sleeps in James and Lily’s guest room, curled up all day in a blanket Mrs Potter sent over from Sirius’ bedroom in Potter Hall. Sometimes he wakes up and stares pointlessly at the mobile hanging from the ceiling. It's one that Lily made for Harry with a capering stag, a dog, a wolf and a rat. Sirius had torn out the rat in a fit of rage when he'd seen it, stepping into Harry's nursery for the first time.

When he'd calmed down, he'd asked for it to be put in the guest room, over the bed, like a chandelier on a budget. Lily had kissed his forehead with teary eyes when he'd replaced the missing rat with a doe.

It's a magical mobile. The wolf and the dog chase after each other with animalistic playfulness, often cuddling up together at night. The stag and doe behave much as James and Lily did at Hogwarts with him chasing after her almost constantly with her eventually giving in to his playful antics.

Lily comes in with the Prophet sometimes and reads him news from the gossip rags to make him laugh. Some of it is funny, he’ll admit. Sometimes he really does want to laugh. But it seems like his chest, his mouth and his heart have all forgotten how to coordinate well enough to do that. He ends up coughing violently and stops trying after that.

James comes in with food and tells him about Harry’s antics, styling the anecdotes into stories while he feeds Sirius bites of chicken and rice and bread. He brings Harry with him sometimes, and the baby crawls all over Sirius, claps his hands and calls him, “Padda!”

It makes Sirius smile, even on his worst days. He still remembers how to do that. Small mercies.

It takes two weeks for Sirius to get out of bed and another to find it in himself to step out of the house, even to go into the garden.

He still feels like half his heart is missing. He hasn’t healed at all but he’s grown resigned to it. They haven’t found Greyback yet, Lily says, lips turned down in an upset moue when he asks.

He asks every day.

James often makes angry Floo calls and Mr Potter sometimes comes by to say he’s coaxing his connections in the Ministry to do the best they can. There’s an unfamiliar frustration in his fatherly voice that kills the seeds of hope in Sirius’ chest more effectively than the lack of news.

They aren’t trying to find Remus, Sirius knows. He’s been told gently many times by James, by Lily, by Fleamont and several Aurors.

They’re trying to find his body.

Or whatever remains of it.

It hits the papers regularly, now that celebrated war heroes Sirius Black, Lily Evans and James Potter are intrinsically connected to it.

So when the object of their search turns up on their doorstep, there is an uproar caused in the Wizarding World.

It gets worse when everyone finds out it’s not a body, but instead Remus’ catatonic but definitely alive figure.


	9. Chapter Nine

It happens like this: Sirius wakes up at five in the morning to a strange, insistent scraping that grates upon his ears.

He’s always been sensitive to sounds. James knows this. James also knows better than to wake him up at ungodly hours of the morning, despite his opinions on ‘morning runs’ and exercise.

He’s getting better, but no amount of stability in his life will ever cause him to become amenable to early mornings.

With a good mind to lob one of James' healthy fruits at his head, Sirius swings his legs out of bed with a surly scowl, grimacing at the unpleasant cold that immediately assaults his bare feet.

“Bastard,” he grumbles, casting a warming charm.

It’s a simple act, but it reignites the wildfire in his chest still raging rampant. Remus used to cast warming charms better than anyone else. He would take one look at Sirius’ curled, shivering form, snort a laugh, and wandlessly wash him in comforting warmth.

It’s these small things he misses. The stupid things. The things he can do for himself but would much rather have Remus do.

That’s the thing about love. You’re whole without it. You're functional without it. If you try hard enough, you can exist without it. You just don’t want to.

In a sombre mood, he steps out of his room, a mild stinging hex on his lips, when he stops short, looking around.

James isn’t up, nor is Lily. The cottage is dark and dawn outside is a dreary grey that still hasn’t dissipated in sunlight.

No, the scratching sound seems to be coming from outside.

Probably a stray, Sirius thinks, with mild amusement. Strays in the neighbourhood have a knack for sniffing him out. They cling to him with large, entreating eyes that beg to be picked up. It’s in his nature to enjoy creatures nuzzling up to him. It has resulted in Lily’s two cats and James’ haughty barn owl, and though Sirius complains often, he doesn't actually mind being treated as an adoption centre for lost, adorable animals.

He is yet to claim one as his own, though. It hurts too much to think of doing that without Remus' sarcastic opinions playing a part in the decision.

Maybe that’s about to change, he thinks with a melancholy smile, pushing open the door.

He blinks, confused, peering down at the stairs in front of the cottage. There's nothing on the threshold. No cat with injured paws, no puppy with beseeching eyes, no owlet glaring at him from behind a shield of wings.

Instead…

Is that a person?

The thrust of the door has shifted what appears to be a body on its front. A swathe of bloody skin, covered in cuts, bruises and scars, greets Sirius' horrified gaze. He remains frozen on spot– too shocked to move– staring at the mangled corpse.

Surely, with the sort of injuries he can see, the man can’t be alive.

A chunk of flesh is missing from his calf and his arms are trapped beneath him at a distorted angle. His skin is so marred with injuries, blood and bruising, that Sirius can’t make out what it’s supposed to look like without all of that. There’s not even an inch left free. Sirius feels a throb of grief for the unknown stranger.

No one deserves to die like this.

Remus probably did, the voice in his head supplies unhelpfully.

“Shut the fuck up,” Sirius mutters, nausea mounting in his throat. Pushing it down, he squats on his haunches, wondering how the hell he is going to turn the man over and discern an ID.

It might be someone I know.

The thought guts him, and he puts a hand over his heart to steady his breathing.

Now is not the time to panic. He needs to stay calm and send a Patronus to Mungo’s.

But he has to at least find out if the bloke is dead or alive before he does that. All the evidence seems to tip the balance onto the ‘dead’ end of the scale, but still.

Sirius levitates the man, making sure to keep his magic gentle and soothing. He could probably levitate him high enough and then crouch under to see his face to check if it's recognisable. But then again, Sirius doesn’t know if he has enough magical restraint to do that gently.

“I’m going to flip you now,” he murmurs to the bloke. “I’m sorry, it’s probably going to hurt a bit, all that moving, even if it's in the air.”

The fellow can’t hear him, but Sirius wants to be reassuring. Something tells him he needs to be.

“Retrorsum Converso!”

The bloke twitches mid-air and flops onto his back. Sirius winces at the pain that must have caused, muttering another apology.

His chest is a sight worse than his back. There are deep, oozing gashes all over it, red and gaping. In parts, the raw flesh is visible and Sirius has to look away and heave before he can even fathom turning back.

Merlin.

His hair colour is indiscernible from the amount of dried blood and filth matting it, but if Sirius had to hazard a guess, he’d say the bloke’s a brunette. If only from the way his entire physique seems to suit the idea of him being a brunette.

He shakes his head. Merlin, he's speculating on fucking hair colour when there's a, quite literally, bloody body on his doorstep is a new order of batty, even for him. Since he doesn't know if it'll be a good idea to touch, Sirius magically checks for a pulse.

It's there. It's so faint that the charm missed it the first time but it’s there. Thready, weak and threatening to give out, which means he needs to act fast.

Still alive.

He conjures his Patronus and sends it bounding upstairs to James, telling him to come down now.

In the meantime, he checks to see if he can heal anything, missing Peter's Healer training with a passion. He hates himself for it, but he doesn't always hate Peter. He can't hate the chubby-cheeked nerd who spent seven years in their dormitory and snuck around school under James' cloak. Sometimes, he just really fucking misses him and hates himself for wanting to visit Azkaban.

If only to curse the motherfucker out within an inch of his life.

The broken bones are too complex to be fixed right by an Episkey. The cuts are too deep for the Healing spells he knows. But the broken nose Sirius can probably fix.

He snorts slightly. The broken nose is probably the least of the fellow's worries right now.

Shaking his head at his own futile endeavours, he touches his wand to the bloated face. His nose snaps back into place and the shock of it makes the prone body jolt slightly.

A flash of recognition startles Sirius. There's something about the shape of the face that feels achingly familiar. Something that's teetering on the edge of his memory. Horror curling in his chest, he reluctantly goes back to his previous reflection that this may be someone he knows.

He murmurs a gentle cleaning spell on the face, wiping away the wet blood and the fresh dirt. The rest of it has settled too deeply for him to remove superficially.

He peers into the face and tries to imagine the hair without the brown, matted blood and the face without the swelling. If he lets his imagination run wild, the bloke could almost be–

No.

No.

It can’t be, it can’t fucking _be._

With a gasp and a sob, he steps back, letting his Leviosa fall. The bloke thrashes mid-air, collapsing on the doorstep in a messy heap. He can’t look, but he can’t look away either and he’s caught in a staring contest with his worst fear coming alive.

He takes another stumbling step back, colliding with a firm solid chest.

James.

Wrenching his eyes from the prone corpse, he spins around, burying his face in James’ chest, cutting his annoyed mumblings short.

“Pads? What’s wrong? Hey, Pads, what’s wrong?”

Sirius can’t answer him, won’t answer him, the answer is lying right _there–_

He feels the moment James sees what’s wrong. His muscles tighten and the hands around Sirius fall away. His voice takes on a vulnerable, almost child-like, astounded quality as he gasps out, _“Moony?!”_


	10. Chapter Ten

Sirius has discovered over the past few days that the St. Mungo’s waiting room has remarkably uncomfortable chairs that cut into one's back and thighs with the viciousness of Doxy bites.

Perhaps he only finds them so because he’s been sitting in one for three days when they’re meant for approximately three hours of use. He’s taken breaks, he tells Frank who comes to visit with a worried frown in place between his thick eyebrows.

He goes to the loo three times a day, and Lily forces him to take a walk around the hospital courtyard every day.

He’s worn out the Cushioning Charm she had cast on the chair, and Transfiguring Mungo’s property is strictly banned. For the fifteenth time in five minutes, he shifts, wincing at the numbness his lower half seems to have succumbed to.

“You need to go home.”

He startles, neck jerking painfully as the words pierce the comfortable cocoon of silence around him.

Marlene stands, leaning against the doorjamb of the waiting room, arms crossed over her chest. The owl tattoo she got a few months ago spreads across her bared throat like a dark, elegant choker. Her hair is piled high in a bun, held together by her wand. Strands of it spill across her face, framing it effortlessly.

It’s a bloody hospital, and she still manages to look like she’s turned up to a party. 

“Hey,” he says, smiling, though the end result resembles a grimace. It’s been a while since he'd last seen her. “Why are you here?”

“Dorcas is on shift,” she says, walking in. Her balance is slightly compromised by the limp she’s acquired, courtesy of a curse mangling her hip during an unsuccessful raid. “I thought I’d pop by.”

He raises his eyebrows. Casting a Tempus, he checks the time– it’s 3:42 in the morning.

“Pop by regularly at these hours, do you?”

“More than you’d think,” she says with an amused twinkle in her dark eyes. “Perks of being a night-owl with a Healer girlfriend. I sometimes bring my research here. It’s a 24-hours coffee shop on a budget.”

He wrinkles his nose at her, which elicits a short laugh. They remain seated in silence for a few moments. Sirius has become quite an expert at tuning out most of his thoughts, listening to the low murmur of the nurses on the night-shift.

“How are you holding up?”

He sighs. He knew the question was coming, but it hasn’t prepared him any better for the lack of answer on his lips. He turns away with a small shake of his head.

“Wish I knew.”

She gently brushes the hair off his shoulder and rests her head on it, shifting around a little, till she’s comfortable. The wispy edges of her hair tickle the shell of his ear, he can feel the tip of her wand in the space between his shoulder blades. Sirius remembers the nights they spent curled up together by the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room, talking softly. She used to do this then, and people had thought they were dating because of the easy familiarity of their actions. He'd snorted when he had found out– it was a ridiculous rumour.

For one, he’d been besotted with Remus since Fourth Year, ever since the night four of them had decided skinny-dipping in the Great Lake was a good idea. For another, Marlene was the closest thing he had to a sister during those years.

Coming from a line of Gryffindor Pure-Bloods, she had understood the upbringing that weighed him down all too well. Whoever holds the belied that Gryffindor chivalry equated to tolerance should spend a summer in McKinnon Manor. If possible, they are worse than the Slytherin purist families. The Blacks, Malfoys and Lestranges pride themselves on cunning, manipulation and having Wizengamot members in their pockets. The McKinnons, on the other hand, are known for their unsavoury brute force, which often lands them in the courtroom with enough charges to merit a seven years sentence in Azkaban. Swollen vaults are particularly useful in these situations, and the McKinnon scions are brought up to believe violence isn't illegal, merely expensive. If they can justify it, it will be paid for. If they cannot justify it, they'll be told in a tone appropriate for an errant toddler, not a juvenile delinquent, that if they must be… severe, they better not be loud.

Marlene’s brother, Melvin, had been a holy terror, Sorting Gryffindor in a matter of seconds. He had single-handedly lost them the House Cup three years in a row with the sheer number of points he managed to lose through fistfights, nasty jinxes, creative hexes, blatant insolence and on one memorable occasion, pushing a Hufflepuff down the stairs.

James didn’t always understand Sirius’ conflicted emotions. No matter what Sirius says, there are things he can't forget that make him ache for simpler times. The memory of his father taking him to Honeydukes to buy him half the shop, of his mother tucking him in the night before he left for Hogwarts have been etched into his mind with the permanence of the Crucios he became accustomed to later. When he felt the burden of both guilt and rage, Marlene would be there with hot chocolate and anecdotes. She would tell him about the time she had healed Melvin’s broken ankle with wild magic– she had been so frightened for her little brother. They had been seven years old then.

It had been hard to reconcile that image with that of Melvin mocking her for not being the McKinnon daughter she had been raised to be. In the Common Room, everyone else turned a blind eye to his prejudiced rhetoric, perhaps even privately agreeing. But Remus had often jinxed the brat seven ways from Sunday wandlessly and wordlessly, much to Melvin's indignance when he couldn’t figure out who the hell had Levicorpused him from the ceiling. In Remus' defence, he’d been calling his elder sister a traitorous cunt.

Slytherin’s brutality in these matters is better known. For his part, Sirius doubts any of the Houses are as clean as they claim to be when cutting into the snake faction's fabric of united devilry.

Marlene puts an arm around Sirius’ stomach while he puts one around her waist. Softly, she asks, “When was the last time you ate?”

“James got me dinner,” he says quietly, after a beat of hesitant silence.

“Did you actually eat it?” They’ve known each other too long for him to get away with half-truths.

“Some. Vanished the rest so James wouldn’t worry.”

She tilts her chin up, giving him a wry grin. “I wouldn’t put too much stock in James not worrying about you,” she tells him. “I don’t know how they do it, but Harry isn’t the only temperamental toddler they have to deal with daily, you know.”

The corners of his lips tilt up unconsciously, before twisting back down.

“I’m not the one they should be worried about.”

Marlene raises her head, cupping Sirius’ chin with a worried frown. “Hey, talk to me. You don’t have to keep throwing up that blank face every time someone asks you how you are. You’re allowed to be–”

“How am I supposed to be?” he bursts out, cutting her off mid-sentence, clenching his fists tightly in his lap. “How the fuck am I supposed to be in this situation? Is there a correct answer? Is there a prototype? Because I’m so fucking confused–” He tears his face away from her grasp, burying it in his hands.

“I don’t know how to feel,” he manages, his moist palm swallowing half the syllables. “I have no fucking clue how to–

Her hand creeps up his back, rubbing slow circles into it.

“I thought he was dead,” he finally whispers, looking up. “I thought I would be kissing a dark wooden coffin with his remains in it for the last time, and that would have plenty bad but Marls, I didn’t– I didn’t–!” He breaks off in sobs.

I didn’t expect to watch him die. 

“What did the Healers say?” Her voice is steady, centring him on the matter at hand. Her practicality is an anchor in the sea of turmoil roiling around him.

With a listless shrug, he stares at the white walls, covered in cheerful framed paintings of Muggle London, country pastures, and sheep grazing in a meadow on the mountainside. The bright colours and uplifting energy interwoven into them is a stark contrast to Sirius’ mood.

“His magical core is practically depleted,” he says, erasing the emotion from his voice as he recollects what the grim-faced Healer from the Magical Intensive Critical Care Unit had told him and James. “They don’t know if he’ll wake up, and if he does what condition he’ll be in. They have doubts about everything. If he does miraculously wake up, they don’t have a fucking clue whether he’ll be able to talk, walk, hear, understand. If he’ll ever be able to cast.” With immense effort to keep his tears at bay, he manages, “They don’t know if he’ll remember anything, even if he retains all his basic functions. Those bastards battered his fucking brain, Marls. He stroked out three or four times on the bloody table when they were fixing his injuries.”

“Did they say all that today?” The question is quiet. He knows the effect those words can have. They’ve left him empty. His insides have been scooped out, leaving him to fend for himself with merely a quarter intact. 

Throat hot and tight, he nods.

“Just before dinner. James was there. I think he’s in denial.”

Marlene shakes her head. “I think he’s holding onto hope.”

“I don’t know what that shit’s worth,” he says, sounding bleak and destroyed even to his own ears. “I don’t know what any of that bloody optimism is worth anymore. I think I exhausted all of mine hoping he’d come back to me, leaving none for the fucked up scenario in which he actually does.”

She sighs.

“I want to think he’ll be okay,” she says, finally. Hesitantly. Their upbringings haven’t been favourable to hopefulness, but she’s trying. “I want to think that when Voldemort fell, we actually won. That we won’t have to keep losing even after we’ve stopped fighting.”

Sirius doesn’t know how long he doesn’t respond, letting those words swirl in his head.

“Me too,” he says eventually, collapsing into her embrace, letting his exhausted, throbbing head fall against the pillow of her breasts. “Bloody hell, me too.”


	11. Chapter Eleven

The day Remus is deemed safe enough for visits, Sirius and James creep into his room like wide-eyed, shy children sneaking onto the forbidden floors of a museum– too eager to see, and too terrified to touch.

Sirius is gripping James’ elbow with fingers tightening like a vice with every passing second that they edge further into the room lit with a pale, blue glow emanating from Remus’ bed. There are about twenty monitoring charms, one for each of the gashes refusing to remain closed for extended periods, and several on muscle and brain activity.

He hates to admit it, but when he sees the unfamiliar, pulsing patterns around Remus’ prone form, Sirius longs for Wormtail’s calm explanations and reassuring presence. He would have known how to put them both at ease with simple reasons for the twisted swirls hovering ethereally about Remus. Taking one look at James’ clenched jaw and rigid posture, Sirius wagers he’s thinking along the same lines.

It makes him feel like a traitor– missing the treacherous rat who put his friends’ lives at risk for a taste of dark, forbidden power.

He forcibly pushes away from the thoughts of Wormtail awaiting trial in the holding cells of the Ministry. Down that path lies insanity. Instead, Sirius focuses on Remus lying still and silent upon the pristine, white sheets of the narrow bed. With a start, Sirius realises he looks completely lifeless. If it weren’t for the barely perceptible rise and fall of his chest, Sirius would have kissed those shut eyelids, brushed his lips over the pale lips and begun the hunt for a coffin befitting the angel Remus is. He has to constantly remind himself with urgent, panicked looks towards the pulsating balls of light that Remus is still alive.

Still breathing.

James takes one tentative step forward into the darkened room, but Sirius’ death grip on his arm pulls him back. He turns with a quizzical look, the blue light of the charms reflecting off his glasses. Sirius knows his terror must show on his face because James’ stoic appearance melts into one of sorrow mingled with compassion.

“We have to see him at some point, yeah?” James whispers, bringing his free hand up to Sirius' shoulder. In the unnatural silence of the room, even his hushed words are far too loud.

Sirius shakes his head, unable to vocalise the rising tide of emotions ebbing and flowing in his parched throat. He doesn't have the words to explain that this feels like a precipice. He’s standing on a cliff, looking down at the sea below, trying to decide whether to tempt fate and jump or not. The sight of that bruised, battered face will pull at heartstrings he had thought numbed and torn merely a few weeks ago, and Sirius is left grasping at straws, trying to come to terms with reality. 

It has been two weeks since they found Remus. Sirius had thought his death was difficult to get used to. It didn't hold a candle to the overwhelming confusion of this intermediate, indecisive limbo.

James seems to understand. He moves closer to Sirius, putting an arm around his waist.

“Pads, he’s still alive.” James’ voice is clearer now, more assured. It still doesn’t ease the roiling tension in Sirius’ mind.

“Is he really?” he finds himself asking, the words falling unbidden from his lips. He looks towards the shallow dips of breath Remus’ thin chest takes. “He looks like a corpse.”

James hushes him, rubbing his back. “Don't talk like that. Look at the lights, mate. They wouldn’t have so many bloody lights on for a corpse, yeah?”

Sirius focuses on the pale pink one glowing near Remus’ bicep. It bobs a little, beckoning him closer.

He takes a step forward, buoyed by a sudden surge of hope. James moves with him, ushering him forward even when his chest constricts, his steps faltering.

When they finally approach the edge of the bed, Sirius drinks in the sight of Remus, his Remus, for the first time in months. Months that have somehow added up to be a year. It's unfathomable that he hasn't seen Moony in so long.

Sirius can remember the fateful night Dumbledore had approached them like it had been yesterday. His hands hover over Remus' body, longing but not daring yet. 

As he looks at the pale, broken form, Sirius can almost detach himself from reality, thinking of all the other times he has looked down at Remus like this in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing after rough full moons. He can nearly trick himself into thinking this is one of those times. Remus will wake up in a few hours, sore and aching, reaching for Sirius' hand because he knows it will be there.

He jerks himself out violently of that sugar-coated fantasy. Remus might not wake up at all. Remus might wake up and not remember anything. Remus might wake up and not remember him. Remus might wake up and not be able to talk to him. Remus might wake up as someone Sirius doesn’t recognise.

These possibilities are the poison Sirius injects himself with to battle the elixir of hope. At this point, the lines between poison and elixir are too blurred for him to discern which he ought to put his faith in. He feels raw, ragged and shredded– like his insides have been scooped out and lain before hungry, vicious vultures.

There isn’t the barest twitch of Remus’ fingers. The hospital gown he’s in is immaculate without a wrinkle anywhere. There is nothing to suggest he’s alive, but Sirius focuses on the lights.

James’ hand around his waist hasn’t shifted. It anchors Sirius, keeping him from collapsing to the floor, as he soaks in the vision of Remus, immersing his soul in what he has been bereft of for so long.

They’ve cleaned him up. His hair is no longer clumped and matted with filth and dried blood. There’s a gash down his scalp, where his curls have been shorn away. But if Sirius focuses on the head lying on the pillow, the curls settled on his forehead are achingly familiar. Sirius longs to run his fingers through them like he would have if this had been a Sunday morning in bed.

There are magical bandages all over him, keeping the open wounds from contracting infections. They’ve stopped bleeding for now, but the uncertainty surrounding Remus leads to inconclusive answers when questions are asked.

Sirius wants to reach out, take his hand and kiss the bony knuckles, softly press against the inside of his wrist. The fragility he can see in every line of Remus' barely there body halts him every time he ventures to touch. He settles for pressing his fingers against the edge of the gown where it doesn’t touch Remus’ body.

Even from here, he can feel the warmth of the body.

He’s alive.

Sinking into the chair provided for visitors, Sirius sighs, closing his eyes. They are heavy and weary from the sleeplessness of the past two weeks.

Remus is alive. That will have to do for now.


	12. Chapter Twelve

Sirius conjures up the courage to touch Remus five days after seeing him for the first time.

He has spent the five days almost entirely in Remus’ room, perched on the wide windowsill, staring intently at the body on the bed.

On the first day, the Mediwitches had forced him out firmly after a few hours, threatening to call the Healers when he refused to listen. James had dragged him out by the elbow when he'd been on the verge of hysteric screaming at the prospect of being separated from Remus, murmuring calm, soothing words into his ear. Once outside, Sirius had sat in the corridor, staring at the walls, unresponsive and blank. He didn't know where to channel the roaring white noise in his mind, the instability that had become his reality. When he had simply slumped limply to the floor without support, James had sighed softly, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. Looking around surreptitiously, he had taken out a swathe of shimmering fabric from his pocket, thrusting it into Sirius' lap.

“Lily finds out, and you’re dead,” James had told him, eyes narrowed in warning. It had taken Sirius a minute to process what the fuck was in his arms, his brain and thoughts slow and sluggish. Once he had recognised it though, Sirius had smiled up at James, his first real smile in weeks, draping it around himself and slinking back into the room.

It had felt like Hogwarts all over again.

Now, he sits in the room, cloaked in invisibility, watching Remus silently. He remains well out of the way of the bustling Mediwitches and quiet Healers, perched on the windowsill in the corner of the room. When visiting hours finally roll around, he hastily pulls the Cloak off, tucking it into his pocket, waiting for the few visitors who show up every day to keep him company. They assume he spends the nights in the hospital to always be there before them.

They're right. It's just that most of them don't know about the cricks in his back from the bars of the window cutting in and the reason behind his head cold being the cold air assaulting his jumbled senses all through the night.

He’s fairly sure some of them know about the Cloak. He appreciates that they keep shut about it.

Marlene visits sometimes, always with a bouquet of flowers clutched in her hands and a bar of Remus' favourite chocolate from Honeydukes wrapped in brown paper and tied with a gold ribbon. She sits by the bed, stroking Remus’ hair off his face with astounding gentleness. Once, she had requested permission from the Healers to very delicately shift his head.

“It’s bound to have gone numb in that position,” she had said, not meeting his eye when he had raised an inquiring eyebrow. He had his suspicions that they were brimming with tears.

Dorcas too comes often. She’s a Healer which exempts her from the rigmarole of visiting hours or special permission to pop by. Every time she comes, she makes it a point to read Remus’ chart aloud with simpler explanations, though she doesn’t overtly acknowledge his veiled presence.

That’s how he knows Remus’ magic is still present in his body, his core strengthening with every passing night of coma transitioning very gradually into sleep. His magic is seeping back into his body, regrowing his cells and healing the worst of his wounds, slowly but surely. The gashes are closing up, and they aren’t bleeding uncontrollably any more.

Frank, Alice, Kingsley, Andromeda come by with their own stories and gifts. Andy brings a couple of jumpers for Sirius and a packed bag of candy for Remus. Frank and Alice pop in with preserved muffins and a plate which they say will produce whatever food Remus desires when he looks at it. It's connected to the Longbottoms' House Elves, much like the Hogwarts feasts are connected to the kitchens. If Sirius had recalled how to smile, he would have expressed no small amount of amusement at the sheer amount of food Remus seems to have amassed at his bedside, more than three-fourths of it being milk chocolate.

When they come to visit, they bring news of what’s going on outside the cocoon that Sirius has created out of St. Mungo’s. The Death Eaters have been rounded up, mostly. Some of them have obviously escaped to properties outside England and the British Isles. Pettigrew is still awaiting trial in the Ministry prison, like most of the more serious offenders. The Ministry has chosen to sentence the minor offenders before tackling the ones with murder, torture or treason charges.

"Saving the best for the last," Frank had said with a self-satisfied grin, touching his ribcage where Bellatrix's continuous Cruiciatus had ruined half his lung. Sirius had wondered, looking up into his handsome face now marred by the callouses of torment, when sweet, gentle Frank Longbottom had become bloodthirsty.

Probably when he had faced down Bellatrix trying to prevent her from carving into Alice's flesh, he reminds himself with a wince. Every question about character these days can be answered with the aftermath of War. There is a darkness prevalent in everyone's soul now, that hasn't disappeared with the fall of Voldemort.

Monstrosity breeds monsters.

Fenrir’s cold trail has grown warmer with the new information being dug up, most of them inform him. Some, like Kingsley, tell him so with cold determination, and some, like Marlene, inform him with sinister relish. 

“We’ll give him hell, mate,” Kingsley had told him, looking murderous and ferocious. “When we find him, we’ll feed him to the fucking dogs and then the Dementors.”

Sirius doesn’t know if that is enough. He appreciates the sentiment anyway, wrapping Kingsley up in an unexpected hug which after a beat of stunned shock, the young Auror had returned tightly.

James and Lily are permanent fixtures in the room during visiting hours. They drop Harry off with Euphemia, who had come to visit twice, both times with cake. Though she leaves it on Remus' bedside by the towering mountain of chocolate, Sirius knows it’s for him. Euphemia has always worried for him, ever since the holidays during First Year when he had cowered in James' room for fear of being hexed after breaking a photo frame. She'd considered him her son long before that day in Fifth Year when he had turned up shaking and trembling on her doorstep, covered in blood, whispering, I've left them, I've left them, I can't go back.

Harry isn’t allowed to come in, but James compensates for that with pictures. He’s learnt to fly the toy broomstick so well that Sirius’ Gryffindor Beater heart swells with pride. The way he sits his tiny wiggling arse on the broom reminds Sirius of the tilt of a Seeker's position on the pitch, and as a proud godfather, Sirius is certain Harry will be the youngest Seeker Hogwarts has seen in a century.

And yet, despite the forced normalcy of everything alleviated by everyone's desperation to just be fucking done with the bloody War, it takes Sirius five days to touch Remus.

He had expected Remus’ hand to feel cold in his, perhaps because his mind drifts so often to the possibility that a Healer will come in to say that Remus is as good as dead, sustained only by the charms keeping him breathing. Muggles call it life support. Most of them don't make it back from that stage. 

But Remus' hand isn’t remotely cold to touch.

It’s warm and solid in Sirius’ like he isn't in a magically induced coma, but instead sleeping in their double bed, about to wake up any moment now. Sirius stares at the long fingers dangling limp yet gracious from his slack grip, turning the wrist around in wonder. He has seen everyone else touch Remus– James always pats his head gently, Lily always holds his hand. Andromeda had caressed and kissed his cheek. Dorcas leans over him with a serious expression, her hand on his shoulder. But despite all this evidence of Remus’ tangibility, Sirius had expected something to happen the moment he touched Remus.

Perhaps he would fade away, like the mirage Sirius sometimes suspects he is. Perhaps he would shatter, the pale fragility of him finally giving way. Perhaps he would arch and thrash in pain, Sirius touch rending through his damaged body.

But nothing happens. Remus remains still and silent on the bed, his wrist clasped in Sirius’ trembling hand. His fingers brush Sirius’ palm, sending shivers tingling down his arm.

That careful, hesitant touch breaks the dam to a sea of pure want that Sirius had been keeping at bay. With rising desperation, he reaches out, tracing his fingers over Remus’ face, his jawline, the hollows beneath his shut eyes. He cups Remus face in both palms, feeling the heat seep into his calloused skin.

Something unnamed twists inside him as he runs his fingers down Remus’ body, sometimes leading a dance with his fingers, sometimes pressing down harder with the flat of his palm. He feels the curve of Remus’ shoulder, the softness of the underside of his arm, the ribs beneath the flimsy material of the dressing gown. He keeps touching, unable to move or draw away from the firmness of Remus’ thighs or the stiffness of his calves.

The muscles have atrophied from disuse and injury, and Remus’ legs and arms are hard and cramped.

But to Sirius’ roaming, hungry hands, they are perfect.

He presses hot, fevered kisses to Remus’ face, his neck, his shoulders and his wrist. He brushes his lips against the sharp jut of Remus’ hipbone through the dressing gown. When he draws away, he realises his face is wet and hot from the onslaught of tears and emotion finally bleeding through his crumbling walls.

Remus is alive.

“That was quite the show, mate,” James says softly from the doorway when Sirius finally moves away from Remus’ body, keeping their fingers intertwined.

Sirius smiles, stroking the pads of Remus’ fingertips. “It was long overdue.”

“I have a feeling I wasn’t supposed to see that.”

Sirius shrugs. He doesn’t really care what James sees. James is family, there aren’t secrets here. “I didn’t do any of it knowing you were watching, did I? I just… I couldn’t stay away.”

“I was wondering when you’d get over your fear of breaking him to pieces,” James says, an undercurrent of amusement lacing his voice. “Remus has always been strong enough for your aggressive displays of affection, you know.”

Sirius blushes. James had once walked in on them… experimenting with rope, to put it simply. He hasn’t let either of them live it down yet.

“How’s Harry?” he asks, attempting to divert the topic.

James shoves his hands into his pockets and shrugs. “Screamed ‘Paffoo!’ at Mum today when Lily and I dropped him off and burst into tears when he saw the picture of you on the mantle.”

Sirius winces.

“Yeah,” James says, looking away. “Annoyingly perceptive, those little tykes.”

“I miss him too,” Sirius sighs, looking back towards Remus.

“Then go meet him once,” James says. It sounds like he’s prepared himself for the futile conversation where he entreats Sirius to leave the hospital and Sirius skirts the topic as unsubtly as possible. He sighs again.

“I’m serious,” James continues. “You need to get out of here. It’s been a while. You’re driving yourself nuts cooped up on that windowsill, only walking around in the hallways to get food, which I strongly doubt you’re eating. Go and get some sleep somewhere that won’t kill your back. Mum's been dying to spoil your ungrateful arse since she saw what a mess you've made of yourself.”

“I wish I could take him with me,” Sirius says, not looking up. “I don’t want to miss a second, Prongs, he–” He chokes on the words.

For a while, there’s silence, broken only by the soft beep of Remus’ monitoring spells.

“I know,” James says eventually. Though there's weary resignation in his tone, he sounds like he understands. He ambles over to the windowsill where Sirius spends his nights and draws his wand. “I’ll just Transfigure a few pillows then, shall I? You’re shit at cushioning charms, no wonder you’ve been sitting weird all this while. Eat the cake Mum sent you last time so that I can tell her you haven’t become an ascetic yet. Though,” he pauses, surveying Sirius critically, “I’ll be lying if I say you haven’t become a bag of skin and bones.”

With James' warming charm sweeping over him, Sirius wonders what he had done in his last life to have been blessed with Prongs in this one. It must have been one grand fucking act.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

When Remus wakes up for the first time, Sirius is dozing in the chair by his bed.

After twelve days of sleeping on a windowsill, the Healers cleared Sirius to share the room if he so desired, oblivious to the fact that Sirius has been doing so for close to two weeks already. Remus’ wounds have mostly healed, and are therefore unlikely to contract any infections, making Sirius’ presence safe. Moreover, his magic steadily improves in magical presence, which makes James, Lily, Sirius and the others surrounding him at all times a healthy thing.

The Healers had repeatedly advised Remus’ friends and family to take turns with their visits so they could cope better with the strain of vigilance, but Sirius had only paid attention up until the point they had explained that his presence bolstered Remus’ magic.

If removing him from Remus’ bedside had been challenging before, it’s nigh impossible now. He sits vigil by the bed, now surrounded by fewer charms and less beeping spells, almost always touching Remus in some way or another.

Sometimes he holds Remus' hand, sometimes he throws an arm over Remus' stomach. Sometimes he caresses the pale, angular face, often falling asleep in that position up until someone comes in to gently shift him into one more comfortable. Usually, it's Dorcas.

But his sleep too is fraught with night terrors, and a half-wakefulness he can't shake away. His canine instincts kick in, and he goes to sleep with one eye open. Metaphorically, of course. Which is why, when the first tremors wrack Remus’ body, Sirius jolts awake in a panic, his mind immediately turning to seizures, wounds reopening or convulsions.

What he sees instead, makes his breath catch and his heartbeat falter.

Remus’ eyes are open wide, his expression one of pure, unadulterated fear. His entire body is trembling vehemently, and the wrist Sirius is gripping shakes like a twig in a storm.

Sirius is so startled to see those amber eyes open and blinking, that for a minute, he freezes. His mind numbs and blanks, his eyes seeing but not quite processing what lies before him. Only when Remus’ mouth opens in a soundless scream does he scramble to full wakefulness, realising that he hasn’t emerged into yet another one of his dreamscapes where Remus finally wakes up.

In none of the dreams his addled mind conjures does Remus look like he’s seen a Boggart he can't Banish.

“Moony?” he whispers, weakly registering how low the sound of his voice is, how disbelieving he appears. When Remus continues to jerk and tremble, he finally gathers the presence of mind to send up the charm alerting the Healers of unusual activity. He hasn’t had cause to use it thus far, so it takes him a couple tries. Ultimately, orange sparks shoot out of his wand, rushing out of the keyhole in the closed door.

But Remus’ hand trembles increasingly violently until the point Sirius understands he is using his feeble remaining strength to jerk away from Sirius’ grip.

The realisation is like an arrow to Sirius’ raw, bleeding heart.

He immediately lets go of Remus, whose hand falls with a soft thud onto the bed. If possible, the panic on Remus’ features seems to deepen. He clenches his eyes shut, mouth opening and closing, still soundless.

The Healers rush in just as Sirius’ mind begins to give in on itself from the cocktail of fear, misery, guilt and frustration. But the minute the Healers enter with a cool rush of air from the outside hallway, the sound of their whirling movements buoys him. Watching the lime green robes swish and spin around keeps him from sinking and instead of focusing on the heartbreaking look Remus has donned, Sirius fixes his attention on the three Healers casting complex spells over Remus’ trembling form.

When a feeble, hoarse cry emerges from the bed, Sirius looks down, concerned and terrified. Remus is raising one hand to his face, in a weak, ineffective gesture that is perhaps intended to shield him from the lights of the spells.

“Why is he doing that?” Sirius asks, panic seizing him. Remus looks up fearfully at the webs of light through his fingers, unaware of Sirius' thundering, clenching heart. His lips are clenched around his teeth in a thin line, the patented expression Sirius recognises to be one Remus assumes before he is inflicted with expected pain. He's seen it far too many times in the upstairs room of a ramshackle hut, illuminated by the light of the full moon.

“We don’t know, Mr Black,” one Healer says. She is standing off to the right, her features set in a grim, determined line. She doesn’t seem to be doing much, but a pale yellow light emerges from the tip of the wand, covering Remus’ body with some variation of sustaining energy. Her forehead is beaded in perspiration and Sirius knows from experience how draining it is to sustain a strong spell over a large area for a long time. His mind drifts unwillingly to the memory of his shaky Shield charms cast over Harry and Lily, only a few weeks ago. He pushes it away, practically snarling at himself. “It’s some sort of reaction to what he thinks we are doing because there is no plausible way in which what we are actually doing is hurting him.”

But anyone could make that mistake, watching the way Remus reacts to the spells. As each one washes over him, he writhes and trembles, jerking and spasming till Sirius starts screaming at the Healers, because Remus looks like he’s in the midst of a seizure. But the minute the spells stop, Remus collapses back onto the bed, still fearful and trembling, but not twisting around anymore.

The young male Healer across from Healer Babbington, Remus’ primary, looks up with a frown creasing his forehead.

“Sir? He seems to have been in genuine pain. The diagnostics prove that he is as we expected, but–”

“Mr Black,” Healer Babbington interrupts with a sharp, pointed look towards the young Healer, who shuts his mouth with a snap and a rueful, apologetic look. “It would be best for you to leave now.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sirius says, stubbornly setting his jaw. “I’m not going anywhere till you tell me–”

“Mr Black,” the Healer sighs again. “You will be a hindrance. We will not be able to administer effective care to your partner if you are in the way.”

Sirius feels his face crumple. “Please,” he whispers, and he’s too far gone to care that his voice is a barely understandable, broken series of syllables. “Please, I promise to not get in the way, please let me be here.”

“Amelia,” Healer Babbington says this time, turning to the female Healer who had dropped the sustaining charm the second the diagnostic spells had receded, massaging her wrist.

She turns to him, and her previously determined, set face has melted into one of sympathy. “Mr Black,” she murmurs, reminding him vaguely of McGonagall, “it would be best if we left now, don’t you think?”

He turns to her, hands clenching at the air, “I–”

“Sirius, he needs you to do this.”

Those words pierce through the heavy fog in his brain obscuring his rationality. Remus needs him to let go right now. Remus, with his shaking hands, and his arching body, lifting off the bed with each spell. Remus, his Remus, his Moony.

With a jerky nod, he lets her firmly lead him out of the door into the hallway outside, where she gently pushes him down into a chair.

“I have to request you to wait here, Mr Black," she says, not unkindly. "Is there anyone you would like me to call for you?"

"J-James," he manages, not looking up at her. "And Lily. James and Lily P-potter, please."

She nods. "James and Lily Potter have been informed of Mr Lupin’s condition. They are listed as emergency contacts for Mr Lupin, alongside you. They responded, and as such, I believe they will be here soon. I’ll ask a Mediwitch to be with you in a minute and provide you with a dose of Calming Draught. Yes?”

He nods again, her gentle words washing over him like a wave. It's as though he is hearing everything through a filter, the words reaching his ears distorted and twisted, as though his head is underwater. The world swims in and out of focus, blurry one moment, painfully stark the next. Trying to anchor himself, he forcibly pulls away from the horrifying image of Remus shying away from him like a frightened wild animal and thinks instead of Lily and James.

They’ll be here soon, he tells himself. They’ll be here soon.

He thinks he passes out after that, because when he comes to, it's in a bed, with a sobbing Lily sitting beside him, bouncing Harry in her lap.

Harry has his thumb in his mouth, large green eyes fixed intently upon Sirius, apparently unaware of his mother’s tears. When he notices Sirius' eyes are open, his chubby face breaks into a toothy grin, reaching for Sirius with grabby hands.

“Paffoo!” he cries loudly, and Sirius’ heart aches with how much he’s missed his godson.

That’s all his heart seems to do these days anyway. Ache.

He reaches for Harry, whom Lily places on his chest, gently carding a finger through the little boy’s thatch of untameable hair.

Just like James, Sirius thinks, for the enth time. No haircare potions will ever get this mess to lie flat.

When Harry’s gentle gurgles and nonsense words have calmed his racing heart, he asks in a voice as even as he can make it, “Remus?”

“He’s alright,” Lily says, through hiccups.

“Why are you crying, Lilypad?” He asks, keeping his eyes on the delicate curve of Harry’s chin, tracing a finger down his soft nose.

“Because… Because–” Lily starts sobbing in earnest again. Harry turns to look at her and her emotions seem to finally catch up with him, because he sucks his thumb into his mouth again, lower lip wobbling dangerously. Sirius bounces him lightly, and Harry turns back towards him, crashing into his chest with a muffled wail.

It’s the only one because Sirius’ gentle rubbing motions against his back soothe him, and soon he’s happily poking Sirius’ beard with a plump finger. It never fails to amaze Sirius, how fast a toddler’s mood changes.

Lily seems to have composed herself somewhat by then.

“It’s just that, when James and I saw Remus, he was looking… he was looking…”

“Like his Boggart just turned into a supersized moon?”

“Merlin, it was so painful, it felt– it felt– oh Godric, it felt–”

“I know,” Sirius tells her.

“So I came away,” Lily says, on the verge of a fresh onslaught of tears. “I took Harry, and I fucking ran and they told me you were here because you passed out–”

“Is James still with him?”

“Probably,” Lily sniffs. “He seemed to freeze when he walked in, but he hasn’t come here yet, so…”

“What were the Healers doing?”

“They were mentioning something about Magictus when I rushed out but I didn’t stick around to hear. But a little while ago, a Healer came in to say that should I want to go see him, I can, that he's more stable." She looks slightly shamefaced as she says this, as though rushing away from an almost unrecognisable Remus while she remains in the subtle throes of her own trauma is somehow wrong.

With one hand, he reaches for her wrist, which she lets him take, using the back of her other hand to wipe the tear tracks from her cheeks. It’s cool against his palm. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll go now. How long was I out?”

“About two hours, give or take,” she says with a shrug, reaching over to pluck Harry from his chest as he tries to sit up.

“Time to go find out what’s wrong, then.”


	14. Chapter Fourteen

“What’s wrong,” turns out to be a variety of things. Sirius is barraged with information by three young Healers who cannot seem to stop talking over each other to get across what precisely seems to be the matter.

As a result, quite obviously, Sirius doesn’t understand a word, continuing to stand bemused in the hallway.

“–it’s really simple!” says the girl, whose name he has been told twice is Natasha.

“No, no, no,” the slightly older but equally overexcited boy protests, frowning at her. “You didn’t tell him about the kidney damage!”

She frowns back at him, looking mildly stricken. “That’s not how you say it!”

The third boy standing off to the side buries his face in his hands. When he looks up, his expression is weary. Sirius gets the feeling this is not the first time he is seeing this happen and itches to inform him that it won't be the last.

“Mr Black,” the third boy cuts in, over the chatter and bicker of the other two. “If you would follow me?”

He's pulled to a secluded diagnostic chamber to the side, with a nameplate on the door which reads, ‘Healer Ajay Chhetri’. When they're out of earshot of the other two, the boy turns to face him with an apologetic smile. “We’re all still interns,” he says, wringing his hands. “Healer Babbington is still inside and he gave us permission to explain what is wrong, but we haven’t quite picked up how to do it without overwhelming you with every detail.”

“Or how to do it one at a time,” Sirius tells him wryly, feeling a tad bit like a Hogwarts Professor.

“Or that,” says the boy, looking down sheepishly. “But I’ll try to explain the best I can, and if you still have questions, you can go in and ask Healer Babbington. That way those two might not get thrown out of the programme for sheer overexcitement.” Despite the words, there’s a certain level of fondness somewhere in them, which makes Sirius smile.

“Have at it, then,” he says.

“Right. Well you see, Mr Lupin seems to have acquired a very rare condition called Magictus. Usually, it’s something you’re born with, though in this case, it doesn’t seem to be.”

“What is it?” Sirius asks, impatient when he doesn't continue immediately.

“Well,” hesitates the boy. “To put it simply, he’s grown ultra-sensitive to magic. He still needs it to sustain himself as a magical being, but he can only handle it on an atmospheric level.”

At Sirius’ blank look, he bites his lip, looking around. “Um, this is an awful example, but, you know oxygen? You need it to survive. You have to breathe it all the time. It’s all around you. But if I pump pure oxygen into your lungs right now…” he trails off.

“It won’t be pretty, will it?” Sirius asks, realisation dawning with horror.

“Unfortunately not.”

“How bad is it?”

“Well, that was what was confusing us at first,” the boy says, frowning. “He seems to do okay with the potions we pump into him. If he had the sort of Magictus we know of, he would have been shrieking and screaming or at least thrashing around the minute we put any magical substance into his body. That didn’t happen. But when he’s touched by spells, it seems to almost burn him. We’re using Potions replacements for now, but we haven’t encountered this sort of thing before.”

“What about performing magic?” Sirius asks, throat dry.

“We don’t know,” the boy says, shaking his head sadly. “He’s too weak to cast right now.”

Hesitating a beat, Sirius nods. This is a battle he will fight with the universe another day. “I had something else to ask.”

The boy looks expectant.

“When he saw me… he looked… he looked scared out of his mind and I don’t know…”

The boy nods, though his expression goes from sad to almost miserable. “We performed Legilimency with his consent when Healer Babbington noticed his reaction to you. Mr Lupin verbalised permission once we healed his vocal cords enough for him to speak. It appears he was tortured.”

Sirius’ breath hitches.

“You might want to sit down for this, Mr Black,” the boy says, ushering Sirius into a chair, his voice faltering. “We had thought you hadn’t noticed but…”

“But?”

“He was tortured consistently and continuously by Fenrir Greyback. It seems that he was… unusually resilient to most methods. But… they used some variant of Polyjuice with your hairs that they found on his body and used Muggleborn captives to demonstrate your… demise time and again in front of him. Sometimes they Imperiused the captives into behaving in a romantic nature with him… not sexual! Oh, they didn’t do that! But they made them say things to him, they made them caress his face, his skin… and then Greyback would… murder them.”

Sirius’ mind has gone blank again.

What?

“So you see…” the boy continues, pausing and fumbling, “when he saw you, he immediately thought you were one of the Polyjuiced captives. He hadn’t processed where he was as yet.”

Sirius knows it’s coming the second before it happens.

He guesses he should credit the boy for merely wincing when the inhuman shriek rips itself from his throat, his hands coming up to claw at his hair.

_Too much, too much, too much._

__

_My Remus._

__

_What did they do to you?_


	15. Chapter Fifteen

In the next three days, Remus does not wake. The Healers numb him with Potions and cast spells on him which glow orange and purple. But even through the haze of Potions and sleep, Remus flinches. It’s a barely there jerk, but Sirius is more than sufficiently aware of Remus body to discern when he’s in pain.

James stays in the hospital, eyes red rimmed and drooping. Every morning he bounces Harry on his knee in the hospital hallway, and every evening he pulls Sirius close and tries to transmit some sort of positive energy into him.

It doesn’t work as well as he probably hopes it does, but Sirius is grateful anyway.   
  
“He’ll be fine,” James murmurs into his hair when the silence gets oppressive and thick with unsaid fears. “It’s Moony, mate, c’mon. He’ll be fit as a fiddle in a couple days.”   
  
But when Remus wakes the second time, James has gone home for a much needed change of clothes and a nap, so it’s Sirius again whom he wakes up to. Alone.   
  
The moment Sirius sees Remus’ amber eyes open, he propels himself to get up and walk out, too fearful of triggering Remus’ memories. He wants to spare them both the indignity of the pain of not being able to face each other without some sort of fit rending them apart. 

Just as he has taken a few steps towards the door, a hoarse, feeble voice calls out, “Don’t.”

Sirius can’t help it.

Hearing Remus’ voice after a year, sounding so familiar though it’s coated in unfamiliar scratches of disuse, sends him to his knees. They give out under him, and before he knows it, he’s on the floor, curled in on himself, trying not to cry.

He remains there, mind and heart racing, facing away from Remus, knees pounding from the impact of the fall.   
  
“Moony?” he asks, softly, sounding choked to his own ears, without turning back. “ _Moony_?”   
  
There’s a dry, brittle laugh which dissolves into fitful coughs. “The very same.”

“Y-you– I can leave, if you– I don’t want you to–”

“Shh,” Remus chastens and the soft warmth of the sound washes over Sirius. “Stay. I don’t need you to go.”

“O-oh.”

“Legilimency stabilises accessed memories. I know who… who you are.”

Neither of them say anything after that for a few moments.   
  
“Sirius,” Remus finally whispers. “Sirius, love, turn around.”

Sirius focuses on the brass handle of the door. It has scratches on its underside.   
  
“Are you sure it’s okay for me to do that?” he whispers back, unable to raise his voice above the softness which seems to keep him safe from the harsher realities.   
  
“Y-yeah. I just, I just want to see you.”

Very slowly, Sirius pivots on his knees. He remains on the floor, hands clenched in his jumper. When his eyes meet amber, he almost collapses again.   
  
“Moony,” he whispers again, reverent and joyful, though his voice betrays only wonder. “My love.”

Remus raises a pale, withered hand, beckoning him forward. “Come here, you’re too far away.”

Sirius manages to make it to Remus’ bedside on his knees, unable to shift his eyes away from Remus.   
  
When he’s close enough, Remus’ hand rises and flops into his hair. “Don’t have any fucking strength left, every bit of me feels like dead meat,” he murmurs. Sirius doesn’t know if he’s supposed to hear it.

“I’ve missed you,” Sirius manages after a momentary lapse into silence. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Remus smiles. It is a tired, wan, pale thing that resembles a grimace more than a smile. It’s beautiful.   
  
“I know,” Remus tells him. “I’ve missed you more than you know, love. You… you kept me breathing. Even when I didn’t want to anymore.”  
  
Sirius’ breath hitches. “You… you didn’t want to breathe?” He dreads the answer, dreads when, dreads the truth of what has happened to Remus.

A rueful smile touches down on Remus’ lips. “Not when they… did what they did. I hoped, I hoped to Merlin and Godric and Salazar that they would just kill me. But renegade werewolves… they don’t take kindly to that. But you…” His eyes seem alight with an emotion he can’t articulate. “Thinking of you kept me breathing. I had to get back to you.”

“Why did you leave?”   
  
The words are out before Sirius can restrain them. Before he can spare Remus that flash of pain he can see on the gaunt features. But he can’t hold back the outpouring after that. “Why would you leave? We could have stayed together, fought together, you could have… you could have helped me mow down Voldemort. I wouldn’t have had to lose out on our time, I wouldn’t have had to lose out on a year of us. And now that you’re back–” The sobs rise, making him incoherent.

Remus fills in for him with a sigh, “I’m not really back, am I?”

Sirius wants to shake his head, wipe away that etched pain from Remus’ scarred face. But memories lunge at him, thick and fast, of Remus’ set face before he made the decision to leave, the mornings woken up alone, the sight of Remus on their doorstep, broken and bloodied. He can’t.   
  
The hand in his hair moves very slowly. It’s barely movement, more undulating pressure than anything else, but when Sirius looks up into Remus’ face to track the magnitude of effort it takes to even do that, his heart seems to leap. Remus is trying, in his own way to prove that he’s here now. That he will be.   
  
Slowly Sirius raises his hand, grasping Remus’, untangling it from his messy, unwashed hair. He twines their fingers together, and now that Remus can feel it, he does his own bit. No longer does Sirius feel like he’s holding limp, dead weight. He’s holding Remus. His Moony. The love of his life.   
  
And he’s alive.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

It takes months for Remus to recover.   
  
The first time he sees Harry, he bursts into tears, turning on his side, away from Sirius, James and Lily, crying into his pillow. When he had finally turned back after everyone save Sirius had left, his eyes had been round and red.   
  
“I’ve missed too much,” he chokes out. “I’ve missed him grow up.”

So Sirius pulls out the stacks of photo James has taken of Harry– of him spilling mashed potatoes onto the front of his tunic, of him tugging on Lily’s hair mercilessly, a closeup of Lily and his face that proves the uncanny likeness of their eyes. There are pictures of baby Harry zooming around on the toy broomstick, pictures of him on Sirius’ chest, both of them fast asleep in the spare bedroom of the cottage in Godric’s Hollow.

Remus clutches each one of them close, peering into every photo, looking for all the world as though he’s trying to capture details even the photographers have missed. When he finally tires himself out and falls asleep, his hospital bed is a mess of colours and photographs, his fingers clenching in his sleep.   
  
After that, the transition into the life Remus has lost a year of is comparatively smoother. Things are not the same, and sometimes Sirius notices the anger Remus tries to mask that he feels at himself for making the bad decision to infiltrate Greyback’s pack. Marlene’s injury is new to him, as is Peter’s betrayal. When he had left, Dorcas had been an intern in Mungo’s in dark green robes, but now she’s a Junior Healer, and he startles at the sight of her in lime green.   
  
Both of them laugh it off, but Sirius recognises the hug between them for what it is. “I am sorry to have missed so much,” Remus seems to say while Dorcas is simply grateful to have him back.   
  
The pile of chocolate on the bedside table remains untouched for a few days, but the minute Remus gains some of his appetite, it begins to diminish at a rapid rate. The Healers don’t begrudge him the indulgence, instead, it is viewed as a positive factor in his recovery, something he genuinely enjoys amid the gruelling hours of physiotherapy, psychotherapy and futile efforts at getting out of bed and walking.

For someone who has spent a large portion of his life on a hospital bed recovering from self-inflicted scars, Remus is annoyingly insistent on getting out of this one soon.   
  
It’s humiliating for him, Sirius can tell, to have his waste cleared out by others. He had almost cried in the bath which Sirius had given him, gently soaping him up, shampooing his hair and towelling him dry. Sirius had pulled him to his chest and let him dry heave into his arms for a little while.

“I love you,” he had whispered into Remus’ damp hair which had turned a dark shade of brown. “I love you, I’m so proud of you, you’re doing so well.”   
  
He doesn’t know if Remus had believed him, but he does know that he had gritted his teeth and gone back to the daily physiotherapy with gritted teeth and a renewed will to get out of bed without a wheelchair.   
  
New scars litter every part of his body. There are ropy white healed gashes all over his arms, which he tries to hide up until the day Sirius huffs exasperatedly and turns his arm to expose the inner side, tracing the scars with a sort of reverence he reserves for emotional nights in bed when he worships every bit of Remus. Remus had choked up and had brushed Sirius’ hair out of his eyes, pulling him in for the first kiss since their separation.

It was an awkward kiss, fumbling and painful, teeth clacking and lips getting caught in mouths involuntarily. It had taken a moment to regain their well-established, familiar rhythm, the push and pull characterising their love. Remus had pulled away abruptly, flushed and panting, looking away with an embarrassed glare at the wall.   
  
“I can’t even kiss you properly–” he had begun, the first words of what would no doubt have been an epic, self-deprecating rant ending in how he hadn’t deserved Sirius waiting for him.

Or that is what Sirius thinks it would have been, because he didn’t give himself the time to find out, pulling Remus in for a slower, undoubtedly better kiss where they had breathed their insecurities and assurances into each other’s mouths. Tears had run down both their cheeks by the end of it and when they had finally pulled away, Remus had met Sirius’ eyes with a sort of longing, burning passion that made Sirius achingly hard.   
  
Sex was off-limits of course. Remus didn’t have the energy required to orgasm and definitely didn’t have the energy required to bring Sirius to orgasm. That is not to say for them sex had ever been an endeavour whose final goal had only been mutually assured orgasm, but when they knew Sirius wouldn’t be able to find pleasure in Remus’ feeble attempts, which would only serve to depress Remus, they had put sex on the back burner of priorities.   
  
It didn’t stop James from making unending innuendos and comments when he showed up to their room to find them wrapped up around each other.

It’s as normal as this situation can get and that makes Sirius happy. Sirius being happy makes Remus happy and the Healers nod approvingly at Remus’ chart these days.

Remus had taken the news of Magictus remarkably well. That was perhaps because he was able to explain, almost candidly what had happened. 

One of Greyback’s wolves, a Potions Master from Scotland who had been turned by Greyback himself had developed a potion that increased a Wizard’s sensitivity to spells being cast on them. Before becoming a werewolf, it had been a formula he had intended to sell to the DMLE, believing that Aurors would benefit from heightened magical sensitivity. Once he became a werewolf, as proved by the DMLE’s background check, the potion had been officially rejected.

In Greyback’s hands, it had found another use. He would douse prisoners in it, torturing them with spells as simple as Accio. Most of Greyback’s wolves and snatchers were magically inept, incapable of casting torture curses in which the Death Eaters specialised. But with this potion, any stream of magic would cause excruciating pain.

Over time, the body builds an immunity to most potions. This one seemed to work in the opposite direction. With repeated use, Remus’ body only became increasingly susceptible, to the point where nothing but atmospheric magic was safe for him.

He explained this with a face so open, so calm and so factual that Sirius had grown cold. Somewhere in his heart, he had feared that perhaps Remus had severed his strings to the more human aspects of life, having endured this sort of torture.

But then Remus had reached for him, gripped his hand as he recounted the more grisly details of his torture as some eager Healer jotted it all down, and though the pain and sorrow and anger, Sirius had realised he feared in vain.

Remus’ humanity was innate. The wolf hadn’t changed it, this definitely wouldn’t.

When they wean him off the Dreamless Sleep, Remus wakes up at night, screaming. Sirius is startled out of his sleepless reverie to find Remus weakly thrashing and moaning on the bed.   
  
“Baby?!” He asks, worry coating his tone. “Baby, does something hurt?” In a panic, he lights the sparks to alert a Healer, but when Remus’ eyes settle on him, they seem to clear.

“You’re here,” he whispers. “You’re here. You’ll save me, yeah? You’ll save me.” He smiles then, looking at Sirius like he had hung the stars in the sky. “You’re not going to die. They can kill a thousand of you, but they can’t really touch you. Not the real you.”

Then his voice his had dropped and his eyes had flickered shut and the words had fallen from his lips with a sort of easy comfort.

“I love you too much.”

When the Mediwitch had bustled in, it was to a Remus who had fallen fast asleep and a Sirius who was sobbing into his shirt. She had walked back out, wordless.

When Remus is deemed fit to return home, Sirius Floos the Potter Cottage in Godric’s Hollow, giving Remus’ hand an assuring squeeze. Though some of the Potion’s effects have been counteracted enough for Remus to not feel blinding, excruciating pain every time magic washes over him, they still don’t know what sort of effect the Floo fire will have. However, there is no alternative as both brooms and Apparating are too risky and drugged with numbing Potions, Remus waits at the Mungo’s fireplace for Sirius to send his Patronus saying he’s ready to receive Remus at the Potter Cottage.

He’s ushered in and when he tumbles out of the Floo on James and Lily’s carpet, Sirius anxiously bends over to check for burns or injuries.

Surprisingly, Remus sits up almost immediately, blinking at Sirius, cocking his head to the side saying, “Huh.”

“What?”

“That almost seemed nice.”

Sirius shakes his head, unwilling to dwell on medical mysteries when Remus shouldn’t be out of bed. He sends a Patronus to James, letting him know, advising him to tell the Healers and ushers Remus to the same bedroom he had woken up in the morning he had found Remus on the doorstep.

“I never asked,” Sirius tells a sleepy, drugged Remus, who collapses into bed. “I never asked you how you showed up here.”

“I told James,” Remus mumbles into the fluffy pillow, arm bent at a weird angle. He flops it a little and with a huff of laughter, Sirius rolls him over, straightening him out and pulling the blanket up.

“But you didn’t tell me,” Sirius reminds him.

“I Apparria-ra- bloody hell, Apparated,” Remus says, sounding drowsier by the second.

“There’s no way you could have known I’d be here,” Sirius says, surprised. “Why didn’t you go home? The wards would have let you in.”

Remus shakes his head, and a small smile tilts his lips up. It doesn’t seem to be drugged giggling. In fact, for the first time this morning, Remus seems completely alert when he opens his eyes.

“I didn’t. Just wanted to go home.”

Sirius stares at Remus’ drooping eyelids, mouth gaping open as they fall shut and Remus drifts off into sleep.

If he goes and tears up a little on the doorstep after that, well, no one has to know.  
  


** End **

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for bearing with this slightly rambling tale. A huge thank you to the mods who have dealt with my constant need for more and more extensions. They're super understanding, super kind and some of the most patient organisers I have had the good fortune to come across. Concrit is appreciated greatly and kudos and comments make my day and my life, given the fact that I thrive on validation. Most importantly, if you guys think I should add in more tags and warnings, let me know, because I am not nearly happy enough with how vague the tags are.


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